Aswath Krishnan

🤯 1)  I had my first "Aha! moment" with #ChatGPT / #LLMs in November 2022, just around when ChatGPT was released.I had asked ChatGPT to draft the annual strategy for the company I was working at, without providing any additional context. I had only used ChatGPT to answer basic questions or generate poetry and didn't expect much in response to something more complex. But the answer that ChatGPT produced in a few seconds resembled what the exec team had drafted, in content, reasoning, and priority. A few more prompts and minutes later, ChatGPT also had answers for how to present the plan, organize the team, mitigate risks, and execute the plan. ChatGPT was able to replicate a lot of the strategic work of the highest-paid and most experienced people at the company in a fraction of time and cost! 🤯 2)  I experienced my second Aha! moment when I restarted programming last month after a hiatus. After some trial and error, I'm now able to get ChatGPT to now generate 75%-...

We have been talking about the progress of GPT (or ChatGPT) across versions 1 through 4. We measure them by the number of parameters, test scores, capability, range, accuracy, modalities, plugins, etc. We celebrate and are excited about the progress of every version. There are so many memes now hyping up what GPT-5 would be.  It just struck me that humans, as individuals and as a collective system, are also a form of intelligence. And humans have also been upgrading versions. We are on Human2023 right now. Wouldn't it be fascinating to similarly explore and celebrate the progress of humans and speculate about the future? Thanks to a technology developed by Human2022/23, it is now possible to generate a sweeping narrative that transcends the boundaries of time and space with a single prompt. Read on to take a step back, traverse the epochs of human evolution, celebrate the milestones of our past, and gaze with wonderment at the horizon of possibilities that awaits us.  ***...

I just watched Air, a fun and inspiring movie about how Nike, then an underdog in the shoe industry, managed to sign Michael Jordan, a rookie at that time. The movie starts with Sonny Vaccaro (played by Matt Damon) opposing his colleagues' decision to go with the low-risk and low-reward move of signing three average basketball players. Teams and companies operate a lot based on group discussions and consensus. Those don't usually lead to brilliance or extraordinary outcomes - they converge on average, which is why most companies slowly wither and die as they grow. But Sonny doesn't care for the consensus. His deep passion and expertise in basketball make him realize that Michael Jordan is going to be a superstar before most people did. He aims higher and dreams of signing Jordan, defying his bosses and other business restrictions. He makes bold moves, breaks rules, and risks his entire career to make it happen.  As this impossible idea starts to take shape and seem more pos...

Those who control the pipes of information, control the world.  It's a notion I have heard and generally agreed with. Humans are powerful agents in the world. Humans use information to act and human minds can be easily programmed by information. For instance, the "Stop the Steal" movement in the 2020 US Presidential Election, where disinformation led to a significant number of people believing the election was rigged. Controlling information is, in essence, controlling people. But it wasn't until a recent personal experience that the true impact of this control hit me. I was excited to launch a new business and decided to run some ads on Meta/Facebook. Imagine my surprise when, less than an hour after submitting my ad, it was flagged for a policy violation. I suspect an automated risk check program had detected some inexplicable issue and also penalized me for being a new ad publisher with a new page. Although the violation seemed thematically relevant to my ad, it wa...