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How do we think about a fundamentally unknown and unknowable risk, when the experts agree only that they have no idea?
9 months 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.

4 days ago 7 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 33 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 73 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 59 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 78 votes

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So Much "Succession"

The Murdoch family succession drama is as succession-y as "Succession" could ever succession.

22 hours ago 4 votes
America is being sold out by its leaders

If Trump and Elon think they can forge a grand right-wing alliance with China and Russia, they're heading for trouble.

yesterday 3 votes
Turkey’s translators are training the AI tools that will replace them

Human fallout may include being replaced by LLMs, diminished skills, and fewer career options for all but the elite scholars.

2 days ago 6 votes
Japan, South Korea, and Poland need nuclear weapons immediately

A repost, with some urgent updates.

3 days ago 4 votes
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.

4 days ago 7 votes