Newsletter #12 - Learning About Wealth and AI
Hello friends,
June is here and the summer is beginning. I wrote what my might end up being my final exams ever at Chalmers a couple of days ago. It feels crazy to write, but it is true. Many of my friends and classmates that I started school with 5 years ago are graduating and it feels like the end of an era. We are about to actually "grow up", which may sound a little silly coming from a soon-to-be 26-year-old, but being in university allows you to postpone growing up and facing reality to some extent. This is where the real journey begins.
With wrapping up my exams and now preparing for my summer job to begin next week I have not had time to write as much as I wanted, so it will again be a shorter newsletter. I
Learning Outside of School
Last week I stumbled upon the course The AI Awakening which is offered by the economist Erik Brynjolfsson at Stanford. I think Erik's work is fascinating and I read some of his articles after coming across his work in the book Life 3.0, which I read last year and highly enjoyed. Erik Brynjolfsson is an economist focused on the impact of technology and now specifically AI on productivity and the economy. The course looks at how we can shape AI policy and development to avoid a "rich getting richer" situation as we have seen for most of the digital era. I have only begun the course but I find it interesting so far and there are guest lectures by some of the leading minds in the world of AI development.
I am both intrigued and slightly scared by the development of AI in today's world. But I think it is a better strategy to try and learn more and get involved with the technology than to stay on the sidelines. For that reason, I am trying to use AI tools more, but also learn more about the technology behind AI models such as large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT. I found this explanation by Gustav Söderström, CPO & CTO at Spotify, good and quite digestible. I am also trying to improve my Python skills to hopefully play around more with ML models shortly.
Podcast I Have Enjoyed
I re-listened to an episode on Naval's podcast called How to Get Rich which is based on his famous Twitter thread. Naval Ravikant is a famous Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor, a prolific writer, and shares a lot of thoughts and opinions online. He is not afraid to say what he thinks and suffers no fools, but he generously shares lessons he has learned along the way. The main message of this thread is that we should all strive to build leverage so that we can gain freedom. The two best generators of leverage in the modern world are code and media according to Naval. This is because of the fact that they have almost zero marginal cost, thus creating crazy profit margins. Throughout this marathon episode, Naval also touches upon life philosophy and the importance of health. It is a 3.5-hour-long episode on life advice which is often insightful. There are many things I may not agree on in the episode as well, but you can't deny that there are some real nuggets of wisdom in the episode.
I want to wish you a great week! Here in Sweden, it is a short week as the 6th of June is our national day. I am planning to go hiking with my girlfriend during the long weekend so hopefully, we won't get too much rain. All the best until next week!
Oskar Eggert