Welcome to AI: Reset to Zero!
I’ve spent my lifetime at the intersection of Internet technology and business as an analyst, investor, entrepreneur, and advisor. Sat at the big table in the PC and Internet waves. Focused for a few years now on the AI Tech Wave, which I’ve been analyzing and working deeply around now for over a decade. And have been a life-long practitioner of horizontal building across disciplines, building ‘On the Shoulders of Giants, or OTSOG’ driven knowledge, now exponentially turbo-charged with AI.
And with AI, it’s all just now getting really interesting. The last three decades of my professional work around Moore’s Law driven Tech waves around the PC and the Internet, were but a dress rehearsal for what’s ahead. AI is ‘Resetting everything to Zero,’ for a fresh start at scale (see below). All in a good way.
I’m excited to do this AI thing with like-minded people. Let’s do it together.
WHY ‘AI: RESET TO ZERO’?
Every technology wave for hundreds of years, has meant society having to reset almost everything they do across almost every human endeavor and industry. After we’ve fretted about, debated, experienced and figured out both the bad and good uses. Generally for Net good over time.
This is true from the fire and wheel on, but certainly of late with the printing press, the steam engine, combustion engine, telephone, transistor, internet, social media, mobile…you get the picture.
The latest BIG tech waves in most of our lifetimes, have of course been the computer, the PC, the Internet and now AI. It may take decades or of late, just years due to exponential curves and globalized supply chains, to reset things from the way they were done. Out daily habits changed meaningfully within and across generations. Globally due to the democratizing of technology due to exponentially lower costs and prices over time.
The curves since the computer have been more exponential than linear, which is why it’s gotten much tougher for regular folks to grok, keep up and adjust. And AI models and hardware, at least for the next few years, will scale exponentially at a pace far eclipsing Moore’s Law of doubling every two years, while halving in price. Exponential growth is not easy to fit into our daily world.
Walking 30 steps in a straight line gets us partly down a football field. Walking 30 steps exponentially, if that were possible, gets us to the Moon.
We are here, in an Amazonian forest of exponentials looped around us:
WHY SUBSCRIBE?
Get a free, daily peek at the AI tech wave, with a mainstream take on this AI software that even the top AI scientists barely understand. Where AI software is just starting to eat the software eating the world thus far. Fusing two types of software together for the first time in 75 years of computing.
‘Probabilistic’ software being added to the ‘Deterministic’, software that’s been the norm for decades. Since the transistor in 1947. Crossing the Streams:
If you’re new here, these some most recent posts summarizing some of the key recent AI events as we kick off 2024, as well as the key AI themes and frameworks that I use:
When humans climb faster ‘On the Shoulders of Giants’ (OTSOG), with AI
Why ‘Small AI’ may be more interesting than ‘Big AI’ in 2024
Welcome.
“Our intuition about the future is linear. But the reality of information technology is exponential, and that makes a profound difference.” Ray Kurzweil
More change coming at us in the next decade than we’ve experienced in the last thirty. Note that we’re as far away from 1996, when the Internet took off with the Netscape browser, to 2050, ‘only’ 27 years away. We’ll have two more billion souls on board Earth, up to ten billion. And of course AI is fast being deployed with the North Star of making us smarter. And am sure there will be speed bumps along the way.
Oh, and in two years, we celebrate America’s 250th Birthday! So there’s that as we all figure out the pros and cons of AI.
AI in my view is one of those mega waves. Our lives since the mainframe computer has been about traditional software run on Moore’s Law driven hardware improvements, especially since the PC era began in earnest in the 1977 to 1982 timeframe. And reset everything over the next two decades going into the Internet. And that ‘S’ curve continued the next exponential wave connecting over three billion people out of eight billion on smartphones, the cloud, open source software, and wireless broadband.
All that traditional software is now being rocked by AI software over the next couple of decades. Deterministic software to Probabilistic software (simpler explanation here). Or as I outline it here, “AI eats Software eating the World”.
So AI is the next ‘Reset to Zero’ as Tech waves go. Thus the name of this site. Welcome.
The direct link to the overall site is here. No passwords or login needed.
And no paid subscriptions required. Just a request to Stay tuned.
A SNAPSHOT OF ME AND MY BACKGROUND:
-Investor/Advisor/Entrepreneur. A deep analyst of Tech/Internet-driven impact on industries since the 1980s.
-Long-term Investor/Advisor through PC to Internet to now AI. Private to Public. Startups to Growth to ‘Magnificent 7’ Tech Mega-caps.
-Finance wonk: BSc Finance (Auburn University ‘80, and MBA (UNC-Chapel Hill, ‘82). Self-taught Technologist, traditional software and AI/ML coding enthusiast.
-Over two decades at Goldman Sachs starting in 1982, the year of the IBM/Microsoft PC (Time Magazine, ‘Machine of the Year’, and the 1980’s financial bull market. (Fun trivia, 1st GS hire with an Indian passport, when the Firm had only 2200 people in 1982). Now in 2023, the Firm has over 8,000 people in Bengaluru, India alone, the second largest GS office outside New York City. Over 49,000 people worldwide).
-Founded and led the Internet Research team at Goldman Sachs (1994+). Institutional Investor (II)-ranked analyst in the ‘90s. Former GS Partner.
-Helped dozens of Tech startups and incumbents in their quest to be Tech and Internet leaders and pioneers: Yahoo!, UUNet, eBay, Amazon, Netscape, Google, Apple, Microsoft, NeXt, General Magic, Palm, Webex, Equinix, Loudcloud/Opsware, and others. Advised founders, CEOs and Board of Directors on Internet/Tech matters.
-Tech & AI Optimist. Economic Globalist. Political Pragmatist. Near-term Realist. Life-long analyst of financial and secular tech cycles.
-Born in India, grew up in Kuwait, Educated in the US, now a first generation American.
-Other online presence, LinkedIn and X/Twitter.
-Kindle Addict. Perennial book on table, ‘On the Shoulders of Giants’, by Robert K. Merton. (OTSOG) My take on AI and OTSOG here.
WHAT TO EXPECT IF YOU SUBSCRIBE?
I currently post daily on AI topics. That schedule may change, but you can expect a post seven days a week for now.
I go down a lot of research and reading rabbit holes daily, so I tend to link to sources liberally. Please don’t feel compelled to click every link. They’re there if something piques your curiosity and you want to go down rabbit holes with me.
Generally every post can be read without clicking on any link. My goal is to keep the narrative clear, simple and punchy. May not hit that goal every time, but will certainly try every day.
Also, no AI or ChatGPT is used for the writing. Once in a while, I have posted and will post experiments with LLM AI models and the resulting text and images. But it will be made clear when and where it is used. For now, this site remains human powered.
I also tweet/X updates and post on Medium, Threads, LinkedIn and Instagram. But this site and X/Twitter for now are where my main external output can be seen.
YouTube and TikTok are on the roadmap, along with possible podcasts.
I welcome your questions and feedback. You can reach me at mpgoogATgmail.com
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Thanks for joining the AI knowledge quest. Stay tuned.
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WHAT SHOULD YOU READ TO GET STARTED?
As mentioned before, there are over 300 posts and counting on the site on AI technologies, the challenges and opportunities ahead. And adding more daily.
Here are some of note that may answer some of the questions on your mind. And will give you a context of AI from my perspective, and a taste of what to expect. (Feedback always appreciated).
How ‘multimodal’ AIs really make this tech far more mainstream
Faster acceleration in AI Tech innovation can be safe open and close
Biggest innovations will come from bundling & unbundling services with AI tech
Multimodal AI is the next cool thing from ChatGPT et al this year
AI evolves ‘On the Shoulders of Giants’ (OTSOG) by Isaac Newton, with ‘Generative AI’
For those also focused on AI financial markets in the private and public context, here are some recent pieces I’ve done on the financial and secular AI cycles that are not always in sync.
(Note that although there are occasional discussions of relative AI company and market valuations, this site does not offer investment advice).
