> When I read a self-help book, but it's laced with stories, I lose interest. Just state the point.
The reason why these books are filled with stories that repeat the same point over and over again is because then the idea will typically stick in your head. But some people have better imagination then others and come up with stories themselves when they read about a novel idea.
I strongly believe the potential valuation and financial performance was not the primary motivation for Musk to buy Twitter, it’s simply a toy for a man worth $200+ billion.
Oh, true. But the problem is that Musk, rich has he is, can't run Twitter indefinitely without revenue (more than he's getting today, and it's likely declining). He needs it to perform financially if it's to continue to be a going concern.
He's going the other route - lower costs. He got rid of the overwhelming majority of staff, moved (or is moving?) the HQ out of San Francisco and California - meaning lower costs + lower tax, and so on. So while revenue has decreased, so have costs. In later 2023 he stated that it was expected for Twitter to be profitable early in 2024. Given there was no follow up announcement I doubt this goal was achieved, but it does suggest that it's probably quite close to being in the black. And that's quite good for a company which was only made profit 2 years in its entire existence.
And you believe him? The guy who took out loans to finance the purchase of the company, which drain the company of $1.5 billion a year? I’ve got some oceanside property to sell you.
I agree, but if he valued the soft power, wouldn't you expect to him to take the survival of the platform more seriously? Or maybe it's all for the lulz and I am just a dumb peasant. Certainly, to hell with the valuation if you're going to run it as your own personal forum, but if you scare all the users and revenue away, you are left with a very expensive CRUD system you alone are posting into (and paying billions of dollars for the privilege).
Maybe Twitter will become more popular and influential now that it's banned. It could be the place to find out what the government doesn't want you to know.
Back in 2020, an acquaintance of mine started ranting to me about covid when I wished her a happy Chinese new year. She was at pains to point out that she got her information from unofficial sources.
Curious: what do you do when it's not a good enterprise lead but you still don't want to burn them as a customer? Do you point them to the self service solution?
When I worked at companies with self-service plans, we'd direct them there and say that we can't provide provide them enterprise service for now, until their company grows or their budget grows. When we didn't have self-service, we were just polite and that's all we could do.
At my company, we sell deals between $25k and $1.2m/y. You obviously get very different salespeople taking those calls.
Super junior salespeople promoted from SDRs train on the $25k-$40k; most salespeople handle midmarket deals up to maybe $200k; and the very best salespeople get the enterprise leads.
Sometimes you'll have commercial/digital reps that handle high volume, low revenue customers. The company may also have a self-service/credit card swipe product option, or a free tier, or a support-only option.
I know nothing about physics. If I came across some magic algorithm that occasionally poops out a plane that works 90 percent of the time, would you book a flight in it?
Sure, we can improve our understanding of how NNs work but that isn't enough. How are humans supposed to fully understand and control something that is smarter than themselves by definition? I think it's inevitable that at some point that smart thing will behave in ways humans don't expect.
> I know nothing about physics. If I came across some magic algorithm that occasionally poops out a plane that works 90 percent of the time, would you book a flight in it?
With this metaphor you seem to be saying we should, if possible, learn how to control AI? Preferably before anyone endangers their lives due to it? :)
> I think it's inevitable that at some point that smart thing will behave in ways humans don't expect.
Naturally.
The goal, at least for those most worried about this, is to make that surprise be not a… oh, I've just realised a good quote:
Excession is literally the next book on my reading list so I won't click on that yet :)
> With this metaphor you seem to be saying we should, if possible, learn how to control AI? Preferably before anyone endangers their lives due to it?
Yes, but that's a big if. Also that's something you could never ever be sure of. You could spend decades thinking alignment is a solved problem only to be outsmarted by something smarter than you in the end. If we end up conjuring a greater intelligence there will be the constant risk of a catastrophic event just like the risk of a nuclear armageddon that exists today.
I agree it's a big "if". For me, simply reducing the risk to less than the risk of the status quo is sufficient to count as a win.
I don't know the current chance of us wiping ourselves out in any given year, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's 1% with current technology; on the basis of that entirely arbitrary round number, an AI taking over that's got a 63% chance of killing us all in any given century is no worse than the status quo.
