Creating value in the ChatGPT world

In 1994, before I discovered Netscape Navigator, I was dinking around with ftp, gopher, telnet, and bulletin board systems. The browser changed everything forever, by creating a layer over all of these disparate protocols with a simpler user interface and clean APIs for developers.

Now, around that time, one could have spent time in learning how the World Wide Web (that’s what the Internet was called back then!) and browsers worked: DNS, TCP/IP, protocols like UDP and SNMP, and even the parsing and layout engines of browsers — this is what I did. Many others learnt to build web-pages, and some even built out successful and valuable companies that were enabled by the browser.

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Now to turn to another story, in the early to mid 2000’s, consumer tech was all the rage: we had personal digital assistants (PDAs, I owned a Palm Pilot!), mp3 players, digital cameras, camcorders, and best of all — mobile phones (like the Blackberry, Windows Phone, and the most stylish of them all, the Moto Razr).

In the matter of a few years, and in quick succession, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad changed everything forever by creating a layer over all of these disparate technologies with a simple user interface and clean APIs for developers. Soon after, Android came along to challenge the iPhone monopoly with an open mobile operating system offering similar capabilities.

Again, one could have spent time in learning how mobile phones worked (I spent some time learning mobile operating systems back then, and later worked on the Android team). Many others learnt to build mobile apps, and some even built out successful and valuable companies that were enabled by these all-in-one smartphones.

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It is 2024, and I am dinking around with Linear algebra, Machine Learning, and Neural Networks. Everywhere you see, you find courses and videos about Artificial Intelligence, PyTorch, TensorFlow, Computer Vision, and so forth.

And then ChatGPT has come along to change everything forever, by creating a layer over all of these disparate intelligence technologies with a simple user interface and clean APIs for developers (there is also competition: Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and others).

The temptation as a technologist is to spend time in learning how the magic is created — how do LLMs work, what’s under the hood of a ChatGPT. However, it is likely that just like in the past, the people who will build successful and valuable companies are those that are riding the ChatGPT wave and building technologies on top of this new innovation.

I have spent some time thinking about the question of “Why didn’t I start a .com company in 1998?”, or “Why didn’t I start an app company in 2010?”. The answer — a tough pill to swallow — is best shown with a 2x2 matrix:

To put it simply, I have chosen Known, Hard, Knowledgeable & Kool over the messy and ambiguous Unknown (and often “easy to get started but hard to scale”), Ugly, and Uncool.

This leads us to the question: what is unknown, “easy to get started but hard to scale”, ugly, and uncool in 2024 in the space of AI? The answer is simple: it is Prompt Engineering, it is Chatbots and Virtual Assistants, it is Fine tuning and adding Custom domain specific layers to pre-trained models, and so on.

What is Known, Hard, Knowledgeable and Kool is learning how GPTs work and LLMs internals work — however, this is a solved problem, whereas the “Beyond the Cutting Edge” is the messy space of making AI work for specific scenarios and domains.

The most success and value in a ChatGPT world will be had by the next generation of companies that embrace and ride the wave of what is Unknown, Easy, Ugly, and Uncool today.

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I completed reading “The Covenant of Water” by Abraham Varghese last week. I read it compulsively and at a fever-pace over the last weekend; the book was literally unputdownable.

There are several excellent reviews of the book, and I won’t add to them. Rather, I wanted to share why I liked the book:

1. The book is great literature: “The Covenant of Water” is great literature; it moves you, it instructs you (gently), and you are caught up in the story of all the characters, laughing and crying with them all. I was moved to tears many times when I read the book, and the few times I put the book down was to slam the book down in frustration at what was happening to the characters lives. I hated the author for playing with the lives of these wonderful characters!

2. The book is atmospheric: The book is atmospheric, moving from the early 1900’s to 1970’s, set mostly in Kerala (except for a brief interlude in Scotland). The pacing of the book is slow to start and very atmospheric: the reader is transported to Kerala at the turn of the last century, and one can feel the greenery, the water, and the hills, and the social customs of the time. As the book progresses, you can feel the social norms and customs becoming more modern and liberal. Overall, I loved the pacing and atmosphere of the book, it is a book that transports one in time and place.

3. The book is humanistic: The book is a tribute to culture, to myth, to religion, to politics, and to science. Writing a book that celebrates these many aspects of the human lived experience without putting any of them down is challenging; “The Covenant of Water” does this very well. This holistic & humanistic book is a wonder to read and revel in.

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I hadn’t heard much of Jeff Beck before except for this fantastic collab with Eric Clapton on “Moon River”…

However, I found and heard the excellent album “Blow by Blow” last week; I think I heard it 3 times back to back (and blow by blow!) in the last week while traveling to Mumbai and back… it is an instrumental rock album, and it is brilliant! Highly recommended…

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I’ve found Jerry Seinfeld to be a bit boring and high-pitched in the last few years, so much so that I’ve felt — maybe unfairly — that the genius of the Seinfeld show should all be credited to Larry David. My unfairness was shown in this wonderful 2024 Commencement Address at Duke University by Seinfeld; I loved it and it made my week!

Keep reading, and as Seinfeld says “Just don’t lose your humour”!