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US politicians proposed five tech antitrust bills in June. They’re aggressive and ambitious, and contain some important concerns and ideas. Unfortunately, some of them are also pretty naive - case studies in not doing the work.
over a year ago

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More from Essays - Benedict Evans

The Deep Research problem

OpenAI’s Deep Research is built for me, and I can’t use it. It’s another amazing demo, until it breaks. But it breaks in really interesting ways.

2 weeks ago 14 votes
Are better models better?

Every week there’s a better AI model that gives better answers. But a lot of questions don’t have better answers, only ‘right’ answers, and these models can’t do that. So what does ‘better’ mean, how do we manage these things, and should we change what we expect from computers?

a month ago 36 votes
Competing in search

A quarter century after 'don't be evil', a judge has found that Google is abusing its monopoly in search. But no-one knows what happens next, and whether this ruling will change anything. Will Apple build a search engine? Will ChatGPT change search? Does it matter?

6 months ago 75 votes
Competing in search

A quarter century after ‘don't be evil’ a judge has found that Google is abusing its monopoly in search. But no-one knows what happens next, and whether this ruling will change anything. Will Apple build a search engine? Will ChatGPT change search? Does it matter?

6 months ago 60 votes
The AI summer

Hundreds of millions of people have tried ChatGPT, but most of them haven’t been back. Every big company has done a pilot, but far fewer are in deployment. Some of this is just a matter of time. But LLMs might also be a trap: they look like products and they look magic, but they aren’t. Maybe we have to go through the slow, boring hunt for product-market fit after all.

7 months ago 80 votes

More in startups

In India, buying a gun is a WhatsApp message away

An analysis of more than 8,000 messages by Digital Witness Lab at Princeton University finds the Meta-owned platform is a thriving illegal firearms marketplace.

14 hours ago 2 votes
Is China inventing big important things?

More thoughts on a great civilization at its peak.

an hour ago 1 votes
Power Cut

A week ago, analyst TD Cowen revealed that Microsoft had canceled leases "totalling a couple hundred MWs," with "at least two private data center operators across multiple US markets." The report also details how Microsoft "pulled back on converting negotiated and signed Statement[s] of

2 days ago 3 votes
Mexico’s new tariffs hit Shein — and millions of local resellers

The government hopes the 19% tax will push Asian e-commerce giants to grow their operations in Mexico, and make up for 79,000 textile jobs lost to fast fashion.

2 days ago 4 votes
The Great Movie Theory

Man's pursuit of greatness is the pursuit of a great film.

3 days ago 5 votes