Happy Thursday, party people. This is Bite Sized Beta. We're that one clutch friend that always comes through with the life hacks. Like the fact that TurboTax is on sale right now (no, not sponsored).
According to Reddit, the sale only goes on for another week, so get it while it’s hot!
Alright, now let's get to the good stuff.
In the oven this week:
- 🔮 Sam Altman peeks into the future
- 🗳️ Poll of the week
- 🍪 Cookie crumbs: bite-sized headlines
- 🍫 Chocolate chips: our 4 favorite finds of the week
- 💬 Tweet of the week
- 😂 Snickerdoodles: Thursday memes
FRESHLY BAKED
SAM ALTMAN ON THE FUTURE OF AI
Everyone prepares for disaster differently:
- Some people make an earthquake preparedness kit
- Kim and Kanye had a prenup
- My cousin keeps a stash of hot cheetos in his basement
What about Sam Altman?
According to him, he’s got guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur to fly to.
Yeah, the guy’s a weirdo, but if you don’t know who he is, here’s the quick rundown:
- He’s best known for being the head of Y Combinator. And he got the gig when he was only 28. Paul Graham, the OG founder of YC, calls him one of the 5 most interesting startup founders of the last 30 years (...and some of the other people on that list were Steve Jobs, and Larry and Sergey).
- Before YC, he founded and sold a startup called Loopt. He only made $5M from it, but after Loopt, got $21M from Peter Thiel and started investing in startups.
- Here’s where the fun starts. His fund 10xes in 4 years and includes some legendary names like Stripe and OpenDoor.
- Now, he’s CEO of OpenAI and writing $325M checks to help build the world’s first fusion generators (whatever that means).
He did a long interview this week on the future of tech and AI.
Did we listen in so you don’t have to?
You betcha.
So let me save you a few hours - here’s everything we learned:
- He’s a pretty prolific investor - he’s got over 400 investments in startups personally (outside of YC). Wow.
- He invests in things he's interested in, which tends to be the hard tech, years of R&D, risky stuff.
- He's not super interested in crypto and Web3. He says he doesn't fully "get it." LOL you and me both, Sam. Welcome to the club.
- No word on when GPT4 will come out, but he says the GPT4 rumor mill is insane - and people are going to be disappointed by the hype. They’re also planning on rolling things out much slower so they can be as safe and responsible as possible.
- Despite the rumors, he doesn’t think ChatGPT will fully replace Google search - he predicts people are going to keep using Google for a long time.
- It's gonna be tough for schools to detect and enforce rules around students using ChatGPT. Kids are just going to have to learn and develop new types of skills in the future.
- The future of AI in the long run is going to be so great that even he can't imagine it in it's entirety. He says it's just going to help us live our best lives. Amen!
- He doesn't believe in a fully remote workplace culture and bets that most of the important companies of this decade are going to still be in the office.
- Now's the best time to build a company. From 2015-2021, it was easy to raise money, but hard to do everything else - hard to hire good people, hard to rise above the noise, hard to compete. Now, it’s harder to raise money, but a lot easier to do the rest.
POLL OF THE WEEK
WHAT ARE YOU MORE BULLISH ON?
Will 2023 be the year of crypto or AI?
Hit us with your thoughts👇🏽 |
COOKIE CRUMBS
BITE SIZED TREATS
What happened in tech this week:
Amazon releases RxPass, a $5/month subscription that lets Prime members buy unlimited generic meds — no insurance required. It’ll offer 80 drugs for everything from high blood pressure to anxiety. Pretty sweet deal for people that take several meds regularly.
Youtube's partnering with Arizona State to launch courses students can take for college credit. It currently includes 4 general education classes but is planning to expand to 12 by 2025 to give kids a chance to get credit for an entire first year of college. Huge given the cost of college.
Google’s had a rough week: they laid off 12K people (6% of their workforce), got sued by the DOJ for abusing their monopoly position in the ads market, and went crying back to Sergey and Larry (the OG founders) after Microsoft announced it would invest billions into ChatGPT and OpenAI.
Who had a great week? ChatGPT. It scored a B on a Wharton MBA test and also started offering a paid plan, which costs $42 a month. What do ya get for the monthly fee? Access even when demand is high, faster response speeds, and priority access to new features. Oh, and did we mention the Microsoft investment?
The IRS adjusted the federal tax brackets and just released the income thresholds for all 2023 brackets. Happy tax season…
Reed Hastings is stepping down as CEO of Netflix after 25 years, and man, what a run. He led the company from selling DVDs to its current streaming model. Now, COO Greg Peters gets to replace him.
CHOCOLATE CHIPS
OUR FAVORITE FINDS
- 5 simple ways to instantly boost confidence.
- Tired of all the negative news out there? This site features positive stories only.
- How to use ChatGPT as a life coach, therapist, or journal. Pretty interesting use case that could be huge for telehealth.
- If you're thinking about starting a business of your own, Sequoia just opened applications for their seed-stage catalyst. Participants get 500K-1M in investment and go through a bootcamp on how to start a company.
FROM THE COOKIE JAR
TWEET OF THE WEEK
Life expectancy is 78 years.
Retirement age is 67.
50 years of work for 11 years of freedom.
Start enjoying life now.
— SMBAcquisitionAttorney (@SMB_Attorney)
Jan 21, 2023
Note to self: don't spend life deferring it.
SNICKERDOODLES
THURSDAY MEMES
After 16 years at Google, I was laid off today. I was the product manager who named chat apps. We launched:
Google Talk
Google Voice
Google Wave
Google Buzz
Google Plus
Google Hangouts
Google Allo
Google Meet
Google ChatIf anyone needs help naming a chat app, please reach out
— foobar (@0xfoobar)
Jan 21, 2023
This last decade:
2012: AI!!!!!
2014 - Crypto!!!!!
2018 - AI!!!!!
2020 - Crypto!!!!!
2022 - AI!!!!!
— Bite Sized Beta (@bitesizedbeta)
Oct 2, 2022
😂
That's all we got for ya this week, folks. See ya next Thursday!
If you enjoyed this, we'd love it if you'd fwd to a friend! We don't gate keep here - spread some of these sweet treats. 🙏🏾
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