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Sunday Signal: OpenAI’s GPT store, ChatGPT and the future of the human mind and ice baths
Alex Banks
January 14, 2024
Hey friends 👋 Happy Sunday.
I hope you’re all having a fantastic start to the new year. Here’s your weekly dose of AI and introspection.
Today’s Sunday Signal is brought to you by me!
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AI Highlights
The GPT Store lets you find and launch custom versions of ChatGPT. Over 3 million GPTs have already been created and builders will be paid based on their GPT usage.
Alex’s take: I'm excited to see the GPT builder revenue program in Q1. This could open the door to the next generation of builders—without requiring coding skills. The barriers to creating something meaningful have never been lower.
AMIE stands for Articulate Medical Intelligence Explorer. Developed by Google Research, it's a cutting-edge AI for medical reasoning and conversations.
Alex’s take: AMIE outperformed both doctors alone and doctors equipped with AMIE for diagnostic accuracy. The ironic truth? Machines without empathy may be better at conveying emotion.
The company is building the future of human-machine interfaces with a $199 price tag. It uses a Large Action Model (LAM) that understands what you say to get things done.
Alex’s take: I'm interested to see how this competes against Siri 2.0. I feel the friction of carrying another device in addition to your iPhone is super high.
1 Article I Enjoyed
Dan Shipper is one of my favourite writers. This is probably because his newsletter, ‘Every’, covers most of my interests: AI, technology and productivity.
This piece in particular caught my eye. Thinking and intellect drive us in our knowledge-based economy. But when AI can write and respond thoughtfully, where do we humans stand?
My favourite takeaways:
LLMs like ChatGPT do not replace us, they just change what we do.
Because ChatGPT does some of the things we associate with intellect, we can feel threatened because we might be replaceable.
Once we truly understand what ChatGPT does (learn more here), it can help us further define what intellect means all while leaving our sense of what keeps us different intact.
ChatGPT is a lever that becomes a new lens on what our intellect is—and what our roles in the creative process should be.
We don’t need to wait for brain-computer interfaces like Neuralink—we can start using tools like ChatGPT today to uncover newfound creativity.
1 Idea I Learned
Jim Simons is an 84-year-old math genius.
He also happens to be the greatest quantitative hedge fund manager who constantly outperforms the markets with a net worth of $30.7 billion.
His routine does not include:
Waking up at 5am
Early morning ice baths
Meditating for 30 minutes each day
Instead, he:
Smokes everywhere
Walks around the office barefoot
Falls asleep during presentations
The lesson: exceptional people focus on doing their own thing and living life their own way.
You can take all the ice baths in the world and meditate for 8 hours a day, but unless you’re actually taking action towards your goals, it amounts to nothing.
Self-development should be a supplement to your long-term goals, not a pissing contest over who can take the coldest bath or meditate for the longest.
As Stephen Covey, the author of ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’, says “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing”.
Marc Andreessen on how to change the world:
“The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want, and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think.”
Or, as the great 2nd-century philosopher Epictetus once said:
“The world turns aside to let any man pass who knows where he is going.”
1 Question to Ponder
What can I do today that would make my 80-year-old me proud?
💡 If you enjoyed this issue, share it with a friend.
See you next week,
Alex Banks
P.S. A teenager hacked Nvidia, got arrested, was released on bail under police supervision. Police confiscated his laptop and put him in a motel room. He then used the Amazon fire stick connected to his motel room TV to hack Rockstar and steal GTA 6 clips.