#81: How tech platforms grow and die

💎 Word gems

How Technology Giants Die (Napkin Math / Evan Armstrong)

I love reading history to contextualize what’s happening today. This article explores the growth and decline of GE to look at the tech giants today.

Perhaps a fun way to determine where a company is in this cycle is its willingness to acquire media assets. GE’s ownership of NBC never made sense. Amazon spending a billion dollars on Lord of the Rings? Apple similarly spending big on TV shows? I’m not sure the rationalization is iron-clad. These are smart people who can make defensible decisions, but there is a smell of rich old white dude hubris to it. The cynic in me can’t help but think part of the motivation comes from Jeff Bezos’s desire to party with movie stars.

The inside story of ChatGPT: How OpenAI founder Sam Altman built the world’s hottest technology with billions from Microsoft (Fortune / Jeremy Kahn)

What’s most fascinating is the shift from research-led experiments to a business looking to monetize a product.

OpenAI was also becoming a lot less open. It had already begun pulling back from the pledge to publish all its research and open-source its code, citing concerns that its technology could be misused. But according to former employees, commercial logic also played a role. By making its advanced models available only through APIs, OpenAI protected its intellectual property and revenue streams. “There was a lot of lip service paid to ‘A.I. safety’ by [Altman] and [Brockman] but that often seemed like just a fig leaf for business concerns, while actual, legitimate A.I. safety concerns were brushed aside,” another former OpenAI employee says. As an example, the former employee cited the way OpenAI quickly reversed a decision to limit access to DALL-E 2 because of fears of misuse as soon as Midjourney and Stability AI debuted rival products. (OpenAI says it allowed broader use of DALL-E 2 only after careful beta testing gave it confidence in its safety systems.) According to some former employees, these strategic and cultural shifts played a role in the decision of a dozen OpenAI researchers and other staff—many of whom worked on A.I. safety—to break with the company in 2021 and form their own research lab called Anthropic.

💩 Cool shit

Chronophoto - Guess the year of the photo

Gen Z Translator - A fun AI tool that converts Gen Z slang for you

Time My Meeting - Is your meeting longer than…?

Uncreative agency - A hilarious “fully automated creative agency, powered by AI”

Happy Island Designer - An Animal crossing island designer

Boat Simulator - Exactly what the title says. The canon firing is very satisfying

Ain’t it funny how the knight moves? - A fun little chess challenge.

Share this email with a friend so you Don't miss out to win Discount Card for Amazon-Prime Day!