Paul Graham (@paulg)
@paulg
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A CS undergrad asked me where he could have most effect in the AI age. I said probably at either extreme: either close to the technology, actually making LLMs, or close to the customer, using AI to give them exactly what they want. Or maybe both if you can stretch that far.
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This is why it's a good thing that American labs are in the lead. If Chinese labs were, their employees wouldn't be able to warn us about threats. But Chinese labs will encounter the same threats within a year, in complete silence.
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I worked at Google DeepMind and now at Anthropic. This is a common sentiment amongst my peers.
(I write this in personal capacity.)
There is not yet a viable scientific plan to solve risks from recursively self-improving AI. Please look up!
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I believe the most qualified person should get the job.
Someone asked what I'd do if I were 17. I'd learn how to build LLMs from scratch, and then train ones as powerful as I could with whatever hardware I could get access to.
The Tesla that Jessica just bought cost $48k and has a range of about 350 miles. The one she bought in 2015 cost $135k, adjusted for inflation, and had a range of 270 miles. People who think they dislike capitalism don't know how good they have it.
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One of the most conspicuous trends in recent YC batches is that there are more single founders. Single founder cos went from 9% last summer to 18% this summer.
I talked to a founder today who's doing a software startup after two previous hardware startups. He's so much more relaxed that he seems a different person. Hardware is hard. It's at least possible now, but it's still hard.
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Jessica bought a new Tesla today. Her experience with self-driving was the usual religious revelation. Impressive that a 23 year old company can still generate that kind of reaction.
A recent YC startup spent 250k on a domain. I was slightly shocked. But when I asked how much they raised after YC, the answer was 6.5m. So 1/26 of their round. This is the time we live in; one shocking number counterbalances the other.
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We have multiple reasons for wanting to believe nurture is more important than nature and none for wanting to believe the opposite (unless we = the far right, which we ≠), so it's not surprising we overestimate its effect. But man are kids' personalities inborn.
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If you want to start a startup, don't learn "entrepreneurship." Learn how to build things. The hard part of startups is not "entrepreneurship" but product: to know what to build, and to be able to build it.
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Today is Social Media Day.
What is your favorite social media post of all time?
Step 1: Invent a new extra-bad category of crime, like "hate crime" or "terrorism", with extra-harsh punishments.
Step 2: Expand the definition of the new kind of crime to include anything, or anyone, that you want to punish extra harshly.
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The users who complain about the flaws in your product may seem annoying, but they are on the whole probably your most valuable users. They complain because they care, and I doubt a startup could ever get really big without users who care a lot about the product.
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A lot of the emails I get from founders are now written in a hard-hitting journalistic style. I know they're written by AI, because no founder ever wrote this way before. And once you realize something is written by AI, it's hard not to ignore it.
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@JoshBobrowsky If someone comes along and offers you money it's not necessarily a mistake to take it. The mistake it to be drawn into acting as if you were trying to convince them. Ditto with acquisition offers.
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If I could send my 18 year old self a message, it would have three parts:
1. Prestige is often mistaken. Follow curiosity instead.
2. There's no way to avoid hard work. It's not sufficient, but it is necessary.
3. Don't take your parents for granted.
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The harder the task, the less you care about people's race or sex or whatever, either in the racist sense or the diversity sense. You're so desperate simply to find anyone who can do it well that you don't think about anything else.
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A very common story from a startup's investor update:
"Our partnership with <big company> did not go as expected... It was pretty evident that they were trying to take advantage of us... We’re going to walk away from that situation for now. A lot of hard lessons learned."
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