The huge potential of AI is being able to feed it all the documents about your business and ask it questions. It is truly a game changer to be able to ask questions about prior decisions or product specs as trivially as if it were a SQL query.
The problem is hallucinations.
Without addressing hallucinations, generative AI can help where accuracy is not a requirement like content generation from art to entertainment but it will fail to meet expectations of businesses spending billions on it.
The gaming industry slowdown continues. Roblox stock is down -30% in pre-market trading after missing Q1 expectations ($801M in revenue vs $918M expected) and cutting revenue estimates for the year from $4.28B to $4.1B.
The gaming industry is suffering from a post-COVID & post-ATT hangover. There are too many sources of entertainment competing for people’s attention and acquiring new mobile users is worse now than it was a few years ago thanks to Apple’s ATT.
I recently asked a friend with an EV if range anxiety is still an issue. His response is that solvency anxiety is a bigger issue. He raised Fisker and Lucid as two examples of companies that might expire before your car does.
The issue with Tesla is less that the company runs out of money but instead the ownership experience degrades far worse than you signed up for. Concrete examples that owners are already experiencing are resale values, repair costs and insurance prices being worse than expected.
The company disinvesting in its charging network and new cars is a sign things will get worse not better.
“If you are looking for convexity and growth at the expense of stress and pressure, Meta is probably a better fit. If you would like to prioritize work-life balance, stability, and job security, Google could be a great place for you.”
When the author pitched a new project to a Google VP, he responded, “This is great, but I want you to remember that our number-one goal is supporting our existing search business. I would rather do nothing than risk harming that.”
This is consistent with what my friends at Google have shared working there is like. At Meta people are encouraged and arguably at my level, expected to come up with new product and business ideas. At Google not rocking the boat is far more the norm.
Tesla delivered in 387,000 vehicles in Q1 of 2024 which is an 8% drop from the 422,875 delivered in Q1 of 2023. This is despite price cuts in the range of 20%-25% in the past year.
Researchers have found it hard to tease apart whether social media is responsible for increasing teenage mental health issues in the US versus the opioid epidemic, rising school shooting, looming environmental disaster and mainstreaming of racism in politics.
However blaming TikTok is an easy out for adults who are leaving their kids a worse world than they inherited.
The idea that kids who go have to participate in active shooter drills in school and adults steadfastly refuse to pass gun control laws has no effect on teen mental health but makeup influencers on TikTok do is an interesting form of blame shifting.
A post-ZIRP phenomenon in big tech will be a reverse Peter Principle; where capable people can’t get promoted because the path of hire lots of people then get promoted to manager is closed off.
It’s a good time for both startups and VCs to dislodge capable senior engineers.
There will also be the morale problem of retaining high performers who are told they don’t meet the bar for promotion by managers who got promoted in a different era when the bar was much lower.
I remember losing a bunch of capable coworkers to Google & Facebook during Microsoft’s slow growth era to that dynamic.
Rewatching the iPhone launch by Steve Jobs and realized he put all the most popular smartphones on screen then within a few years the iPhone literally killed all of these companies; Palm, Blackberry (RIM), Nokia and Motorola.
@hi_mayank Motorola and Nokia’s cell phone businesses are effectively dead. The fact thar both companies are still around as networking equipment manufacturers is not a gotcha.
However it is technically true that neither company is dead so give yourself a round of applause 👏🏾 👏🏾👏🏾
@sarajw@hi_mayank Marketshare dropped from 20% to 2% since the launch of the iPhone but yes, you are technically correct that the business is not dead.
A key reason I dislike online and corporate social justice efforts is that they are mostly performative and inconsequential while real injustice is ignored.
Google will happily police if you can say “guys” in a meeting while systematically underpaying 15,500 women for years.
To get the level of specificity needed to ask a computer to perform tasks will need dedicated jargon not just regular English. Which over time you will shorten with abbreviations and symbols for conciseness.
And then you’d have reinvented programming languages.
Nvidia hit $2 trillion market cap today after the largest growth in valuation in a single day when it’s valuation jumped by $277 billion after it announced 265% year over year revenue growth plus optimistic projections for next year.
Google has rebranded Bard to Gemini and has rolled out an Android app along with Gemini integration into the Google iOS app. They have also added a paid tier for $19.99 for their most advanced model.
This is reminiscent of Microsoft and OpenAI’s strategy.
Ethan Mollick has been using Gemini for a month and considers it as capable as GPT-4.
He also contrasts Microsoft treating AI as an enhancer of productivity tools, OpenAI’s general purpose knowledge worker replacement and Google’s AI as personal assistant
Love the format of making fun of Steve Jobs copycat announcements.
A browser being an AI agent that does tasks for a user is one of the original dreams of the internet. The HTTP header is called “user-agent” for a reason
Multiple companies now see blood in the water when it comes to Google’s 10 blue links + ads model and are coming in for the kill.