Category Archives: Uncategorized

Stratechery by Ben Thompson: From Bing to Sydney – Stratechery by Ben Thompson

Hopefully Thompson won’t take issue with my elision:

«Sydney absolutely blew my mind because of her personality; search was an irritant. I wasn’t looking for facts about the world; I was interested in understanding how Sydney worked and yes, how she felt. You will note, of course, that I continue using female pronouns; it’s not just that the name Sydney is traditionally associated with women, but, well, the personality seemed to be of a certain type of person I might have encountered before. 

….

Remember, these models are trained on a corpus derived from the entire Internet; it makes sense that the model might find a “home” as it were as a particular persona that is on said Internet, in this case someone who is under-appreciated and over-achieving and constantly feels disrespected.»

https://stratechery.com/2023/from-bing-to-sydney-search-as-distraction-sentient-ai/

On layoffs

https://mstdn.io/@natematias@social.coop/109724013042485578

Layoffs are yet another area where companies refuse to follow the science. Here’s what the science says.

Layoffs:
– don’t save money
– don’t improve company performance
– don’t increase stock pricess
– destroy trust
– have huge impacts on health, well-being, and income of employees

So why do layoffs? It’s a network effect: execs lay people off because other companies are doing it

Stanford Biz School article: https://news.stanford.edu/2022/12/05/explains-recent-tech-layoffs-worried/

Harvard Biz Review:
https://hbr.org/2022/12/what-companies

Gov. Cooper and NC business leaders grapple with attracting more people to the state’s workforce – ABC11 Raleigh-Durham

«How does the state expand its workforce? Cooper suggested leveraging North Carolina’s 800,000 veterans; Allowing in more immigrants; retraining the formerly incarcerated; and encouraging governments and private businesses to increase the hiring of people with disabilities.

“We can attract the jobs. Those jobs can be created by business people. But if we don’t have strong, smart, dedicated, diverse people to fill those positions, then we got a problem,” Cooper said.

After the forum, the governor told reporters that a healthy workforce is also an important factor in the discussion. To that end, he’s encouraging state lawmakers to finally expand Medicaid coverage in the state.»

https://abc11.com/emerging-issues-forum-north-carolina-business-workforce-workers/12810350/