364: ChatGPT, Mr. Beast, Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, Semiconductors, Wind Turbines, and Base Editing

"You need a certain kind of thinking to find flaws"

You can get in way more trouble with a good idea than a bad idea, because you forget that the good idea has limits.

―Ben Graham

🛀 Would you rather have a lifetime supply of your favorite food or never have to sleep again?

I know which I’d pick, but I won’t tell so as not to bias your answer.

🎄🎶 I wonder how much Michael Bublé makes in royalties every year from his Xmas album.

And is that more or less than Mariah Carey makes for that one song 🤔

What a jackpot annuity it is for a musician to write something that gets played everywhere for a month every year for decades in a row… I’m sure the Bing Crosby estate agrees!

🤖 🔐 I was thinking about how ChatGPT is used in unexpected ways in the wild and how OpenAI is trying to lock down more things (ie. if you ask how to commit crimes, etc).

Predicting angles of attack is a very difficult task.

The people who are good at creating these AI models aren't likely to be the same people who are good at finding exploits and loopholes.

That's why I think AI companies need to hire a bunch of people who were former black hat hackers or work in security, at least as consultants (like in that classic film ‘Sneakers’, haha). It may be less important when generating images, but once you have models that can trivially create proteins/complex molecules to target certain functions, modify viruses, etc, the stakes become a lot higher.

You need a certain kind of thinking to find flaws, and most of us are too ‘lawful good’ to be good at it. But some people just naturally think like that:

As with most successful racers, [Henry "Smokey" Yunick] was a master of the grey area straddling the rules.

Perhaps his most famous exploit was his #13 1966 Chevrolet Chevelle, driven by Curtis Turner.

The car was so much faster than the competition during testing that they were certain that cheating was involved; some sort of aerodynamic enhancement was strongly suspected, but the car's profile seemed to be entirely stock, as the rules required. It was eventually discovered that Yunick had lowered and modified the roof and windows and raised the floor (to lower the body) of the production car. Since then, NASCAR required each race car's roof, hood, and trunk to fit templates representing the production car's exact profile.

Another Yunick improvisation was getting around the regulations specifying a maximum size for the fuel tank, by using 11-foot (3 meter) coils of 2-inch (5-centimeter) diameter tubing for the fuel line to add about 5 gallons (19 liters) to the car's fuel capacity.

That’s so clever. Gotta wonder how many people did it with a shorter hose to get just a little bit extra and got away with it.

Once, NASCAR officials came up with a list of nine items for Yunick to fix before the car would be allowed on the track. The suspicious NASCAR officials had removed the tank for inspection. Yunick started the car with no gas tank and said "Better make it ten," and drove it back to the pits. He used a basketball in the fuel tank which could be inflated when the car's fuel capacity was checked and deflated for the race.

That would be such a good film scene!

🗣🗣🎙 I really enjoyed this conversation between two friends-of-the-show:

• 🎧 Infinite Loops: Rohit Krishnan — Unleashing Curiosity (EP.136)

🍳 I haven’t had to do this to my cast iron yet, but good to know:

🎧🎤 I just realized that I haven’t listened to the “How I Built This” podcast in at least a few years.

I used to listen to a ton of it maybe 4-5 years ago. I don’t know what happened… I’ll have a look at their recent episodes.

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🏦 💰 Liberty Capital 💳 💴

Going vertical 🤖🚀

I wish the graph also included StableDiffusion, Midjourney, DALL-E 2, Lensa, etc.

To be clear, this is just comparing user growth in the early days of a new product vs other products that are historically known to have grown *really* fast. The chart shouldn’t be read to imply that ChatGPT is like these other products or will compete with them directly.