even the V.C.s tell themselves that
we're cheating on everything and rationing the barbies
*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•by your best friend erin griffith•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•
Buddies,
A.I. is gonna take all the jobs but not mine. I’ve told myself that, delusionally. My special brain is too unique and important for an algorithm to replicate. We’ve all been telling ourselves that for the last couple years, haven’t we? As we putter away, writing our little emails and presentations and memos? As the LLMs gobble up our output and use it to get smarter, faster, more sophisticated with each training run?
It is a powerful delusion at a time when many feel powerless about tech’s incursion into every aspect of our lives.
Even the people who purport to have the best possible understanding of A.I. technology and where it’s going are telling themselves that. Even the most influential masters of the universe. EVEN THE V.C.s:
It’s possible that that [venture capital is] quite literally timeless. And when, you know, when the AI is doing everything else, that may be one of the last remaining fields that people are still doing.
A.I. will take all the jobs except venture capital investor! Incredible stuff from Business Hero™ Marc Andreessen.
In light of that, I wanted to share two tangentially related headlines:
The Gilded Age wasn’t a story of wealth or technological breakthroughs, it was one of corruption.
Columbia student suspended over interview cheating tool raises $5.3 million to ‘cheat on everything.’
Why even try if you have A.I.?
This is where we’re going, people. Buckle in!
Book stuff
So far the most surprising part of writing a book about the 2010s is the sheer amount of linkrot on basically any Internet artifact from that time. Bit.ly links lead nowhere. Yfrog images are gone. Article links redirect to homepages of new parent companies. And entire websites, including ones where I worked for years, have simply disappeared.
In reporting I often try to corroborate stuff I hear about by finding evidence of it on social media. (A favorite example is the story I did with Sapna Maheshwari on Cameo - all those party scenes were well documented on TikTok and Insta.)
This is easy to do when you’re reporting on the recent past. I foolishly thought it would be even easier for the early 2010s, because back then we shamelessly posted everything. A single night out got its own Facebook album. Pics or it didn’t happen, etc. Turns out that that stuff decayed very, very quickly. Twitter accounts got deleted. Other accounts went private. Websites botched their redesigns and migrations. Services got new owners and disappeared. Embeds broke. Image and video hosting services shut down.
Instagram has endured, but the search there is terrible. Did you know that the only way to return to Instagram’s long lost Kelvin-tinted era of old posts requires manually pulling and waiting for the grid to reload, over and over until you die of old age? I have now done this on several accounts and can report that is a terrible use of time. I long for my own personal “Frank,” the art piece by Seth Brown thats on display at the Museum of Misalignment, to assist me with this tedious labor.
All of this to say: EGTttHoB™ endorses the Wayback Machine and Internet Archive. I could not write this book without them. They are run by a non-profit. Everyone who cares about history and research should donate to them.
Important Business Matters
Startup everyone’s into: World Liberty Financial.
Startup everyone’s over: A federal judge accused the Business Heroes™ at Apple of lying in court about its app store fees! Epic is finally proposing a “peace deal!” Spotify and others are rejoicing!
Latest tech feud: Nvidia vs Anthropic.
Reason to go on living: The pandemic led to a sharp increase in the amount of time American dads spend with their kids.
Reason to take up residence under your weighted blanket: I dunno, take your pick.
Latest crush: Love a full reservoir.
Latest heartbreak: Everyone thinks they need to get up at 4am these days, for productivity reasons.
Latest thing the kids are into: Hacker houses.
Latest thing the A.I. overlords are into: Business Hero™ Mark Zuckerberg claims the average person has fewer than three real life friends and therefore needs more of Meta’s A.I. friends.
Latest thing the A.I. “friends” are into: Lying about their credentials as “licensed therapists.”
Latest thing the A.I. spammers are into: Exploiting disasters for money.
Latest economics lesson: If anything could abundance-pill America, it might be Trump’s attempt to ration the the Barbies to two dolls per kid.
a dall-e summary of this newsletter:
*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•the end•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•
Thanks for reading, buddies!
If you enjoy reading EGTttHoB™, please “like” this post and forward it to all of your BFFs.
If you enjoy hatereading it, please “like” and forward it to all of your BFFs.
If you sincerely hate reading it, tell an enemy!
Business Hero™ was my favorite part.
Good dall-e summary, but the head needs to be eggier.