Beautifully written! Thanks for sharing. I share a lot the emotional journey you described in my youth and also why I chose to be a programmer. The world felt so small during that time and something you could wrap your arms around and the community was your family. I don't know how the pre-teens of today percieve computing and technology, but I'd venture it's very different. Hope, though, that they feel the same rush with opportunities with AI that we felt with computing and the nascent connectivity of our times.
Yep, presumed guilt for anything Chinese is a prevailing wisdom in the west. Though justified in some cases, we give western companies a pass in many areas, where we don't to Chinese counterparts.
Congrats on building this Gaurav. I think you can take this a step further and create how alignment is formed in powerful people's views (in public statements, at least) on important topics over time, and how potential political and world events drive those alignments.
As a fellow Gen Xer I identify with this. More and more of my friends drink less and less and when they do they prefer a cocktail instead. I think wine has lost the appeal it used to have in the early 2000s. The cost of a glass of wine in the restaurant doesn't help either. As an ex-avid wine drinker, I would be hard pressed to spend more than $30 of a bottle because of the diminishing difference in incremental quality after that price point.
The repeating story - There are X number of people in the tech and finance world that form a close network. It is the incestuous coming together of those that enable all of them to become a multi billionaire through acquisitions and IPOs. New people join this list on a regular basis by building something that create FOMO amongst the already billionaires and they indoctrinate those into the group using retail investor money.
The best part of all of this is the most if not all people have no idea what the hell is going on when every day a new paradigm/tooling/harness emerges. It's hard to keep up. On the plus side, it's a great equalizer.
How is this any different from people in any field that are impacted by AI and lose the utility of their skills and endeavors over the past decades? Are we saying that we're running out of problems to solve because of AI and hence it should be stopped? I am not underestimating the importance of the collective knowledge of the mathematics community and the role of mathematics as the enablers of other sciences, but opposing meaningful progress in that discipline or any for that matter feels counter intuitive. I would rather have the mathematics community start collaborating closely with the this newly evolving and powerful tool to expedite humanity's progress.
You'd be surprised what hate is capable of. Once you paint a side as the enemy and convince half of the population of that, it becomes easy to carryout acts even if they're detrimental to the your side too. Look at the US economy and inflation caused by the tariffs and wars for instance. It's the 'our side is winning' mentality shortsightedness that destroys nations and institutions. By the time people realize this, it's often too late.
Maybe a dumb question, but when navigating the worlds on the site, I notice that the space is 3D, but the objects (the drum set, or the vending machine) are flat 2D layers that one cannot walk around or examine from a different angle. Is this the inherit limitation of the approach or future features? Thanks.
You're not unusual. Constant need for something in your ear is a very new phenomena and for some reason a lot of people have gotten in the habit of isolating themselves from the world around them and stopped being in presence of the reality. Sad.
The issue is not just bank or CC accounts, but your personal data accounts (Email, photos, SMS, calendar, documents, etc.) that give the necessary context to the agent to do useful work for you. That's where the problem lies.