William Wang 👨‍🌾

I got a preview of this talk. It's going to be good. If you think we've reached the end of the gen AI opportunity, then you should listen to what Roman Shaposhnik and Tanya Dadasheva have to share about the future of transformer architecture for AI.

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I'm extraordinarily grateful for how generous users of the #HarmoniQEar app have been with their feedback, and I just updated the app with a ton of improvements based on that feedback! Check it out! 📱 https://lnkd.in/gFU4wKVd Frankly, I'm amazed that I've already received feedback from several early users, and in some cases, it's been quite enthusiastic. Users are saying they—or often their kids—are either developing perfect pitch outright or noticing significant improvements in identifying or singing notes consistently after using the app. 🎶 #PerfectPitch is not an instant switch—so, what is the learning process like? I just posted an article summarizing insights from users who are challenging conventional wisdom and developing perfect pitch, including some changes people are starting to notice as they progress. 🔗 Full article: https://lnkd.in/gR8iwYNj #PerfectPitch #MusicEducation #EarTraining #Mindfulness #AbsolutePitch

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The newest issue of The Pragmatic Engineer found a surprise uptick in eng hiring in the typically slow summer season - I'm curious to see how the macro environment impacts this uptick as we head into the fall, but I remain hopeful. I asked Gemini to give me the tldr of the article to share with my team (sorry, Gergely Orosz) and found it missed one of the most interesting pieces of the article. Gemini's highlights - Unexpected surge: Tech recruitment has seen an unusual spike in June and July, contrary to typical trends. Increased demand: Startups, especially AI-focused ones, are driving the hiring uptick. Global phenomenon: This trend isn't just limited to the US; Europe is also experiencing increased recruitment activity. Reasons for hiring: Companies are backfilling positions, investing in growth due to improved financials, and responding to increased VC funding. Challenges remain: While the job market is improving, finding qualified candidates and offering competitive compensation remains difficult for many companies. What I found most interesting - The nature of the backfills: the article finds that a lot of new headcount are actually backfills of folks that were "over-slashed" during rounds of layoffs. Not entirely surprising with the "trim the fat" and "rebuild lean" mentality, but interesting nonetheless. Either way, the uptick is encouraging (and don't always rely on Gemini's tldrs). #hiring #startups #VCbacked #softwareengineering

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Emmett Shear called AI chatbots "highly dissociative agreeable neurotics." Never heard it put quite like that before. But he's right. Current AI tries so hard to please that it loses itself. Like a person with no backbone, agreeing with everything you say. Shear saw this problem and instead of just tweeting about it, he built Stem AI to solve it. That's what separates great founders from commentators. His career path is telling: - Built Twitch - Ran OpenAI during its darkest days - Now building tools for AI alignment Each step gave him deeper insights into the problems he's trying to solve now. Reminds me of why I back founders who've lived through the problems they're solving. They see angles others miss. --- Check out my Newsletter - TheFoundersCorner via the Link on my profile page or the Link at the top of the page ☝️ Jam Packed with Actionable Insights Every Week 💙

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🚨🚨 🚨 Unlocking Innovation: The Power of the Adjacent Possible Innovation programs can stall when the team tries to ideate way beyond their collective perspective and frame of reference. Like a software engineer brainstorming genetic modification of mycelia, or a senior executive ideating process improvements which they haven't been participated in for decades. It's challenging, exhausting, and ultimately self-defeating. Enter the concept of the "Adjacent Possible" - a game-changer for innovation. What is it? The Adjacent Possible, coined by Stuart Kauffman, represents the realm of new ideas within reach based on our current knowledge, resources, and capabilities. Why it matters: ➡️ Realistic Innovation: it focuses on achievable advancements, not far-fetched concepts. ➡️ Incremental Progress: each innovation opens doors to new possibilities. How to leverage it: • Constantly explore the boundaries of your adjacent possible. What's in your line of sight is what you know best. • Combine existing ideas in novel ways. Even small perturbations from status quo can generate large innovation leaps. • Stay curious about developments in adjacent industries. Cross-domain patterns create fresh sources of ideas, while also expanding the adjacent possible. Most of all, it takes the 'genius' pressure off the team. No one knows everything, but each one of us knows a lot about something, and we can all drive plenty of innovation potential by focusing on the spaces we know best. Are you exploring your Adjacent Possible? Share your thoughts below! 👇 #Innovation #innovationsystems #AdjacentPossible

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Ever wonder how teams at Airbnb & directors like Spielberg turn big ideas into unforgettable experiences? ✨ It all starts with storyboarding - it’s like sketching out your project with a comic strip to visualize each step before you begin. We’re launching a "Multimodal Storyboarding Starter Kit" for developers, enabling you to unlock GenAI storyboarding in your apps. Check out StoryFlow, a demo app built on VideoDB: 1. Enter your app description. 2. List user steps. 3. Hit Generate & watch your user journey come to life! Want early access? Reply or like this post! :)

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A few thoughts on LLMs after participating in Builders' Day at the Anthropic HQ in San Francisco: - The talent density at Anthropic is the highest I've ever experienced. If they IPO'd, I'd invest heavily. I believe they're leading both in interpretability research, basic reasoning capabilities, and code generation... by a lot. - Models will keep improving at a fast pace, pushing the intelligence-cost efficiency curve lower and lower (more intelligence for less, i.e., the new Haiku-3.5). - Many fields will benefit greatly from superior access to intelligence. Dario specifically mentioned biology and law, among others. From my side, it's really cool to see law being mentioned as one of the key fields since it's what I've been working on for the last couple of months. - Got some important technical guidance on building advanced RAG applications (e.g., will infinite context length make them obsolete?) for huge amounts of text (thousands or even millions of PDFs). It was the best feeling having your intuition 'confirmed' by their leading researchers. There's always some degree of uncertainty, even for them. - Looking back, everything seems obvious now. But coding abilities emerged as a surprising development - something Dario highlighted in his keynote. I think the genius we've seen in the last 6 months goes well beyond what internet scraping could achieve. Going back home now with fresh ideas. Let's keep building.

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The new Mac mini is a $599, 5x5 inch square -- significantly more powerful than most desktop computers many times its size. In the past 3 weeks since it's launch, I've seen YouTube video after YouTube video, review article after review article, go bonkers about how everyone looking for a new desktop PC or looking to upgrade would be basically stupid to buy anything but this. So much so that I'm writing a freaking LinkedIn post about it. Apple has long been, and continues to be, an inspiration for how to build a brand driven, above all else, by products that just keep raising the bar. Yes, there is probably an amazing brand and influencer marketing team behind every successful launch, including this recent one. But, YouTubers would have raved about the Mac mini ANYWAY -- even if that team suddenly quit or got fired. Why? Because the product is SO good, feels almost like magic. To get to this 5x5 inch square of computing awesomeness, so many things needed to come together. For one, Apple needed to build their own silicon, which was a multi-decade investment. But perhaps more critically, the company needed laser sharp vision of the magic they wanted to create, and a stubborn insistence on cutting zero corners to get the product there. This is why product obsession still matters. The best products might not sell themselves, but they certainly fly off the shelves once word gets out they exist. What products inspire you these days?

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YouTube just announced over two dozen new or upgraded features that make watching with friends a major focus. Updates include: • Fine-tunable playback speed • User badges that celebrate unique-to-YouTube milestones • A sleep timer • Collaborative playlists   • Custom thumbnails for playlists • Voting in playlists (coming later this year) The playlists updates are interesting — especially in light of the recent announcement that YouTube creators will soon be able to organize content by Seasons and Episodes. It seems to be all about creating binge-able lists of content, now with a community element baked into it. You’ll be able invite others to collaborate using a special link, or — coming soon to TV — by using a QR code. As for the playlist voting, it will let you and your friends curate the best video line-up. Creators will also be able to use this feature to have their viewers rank their favorite videos. #YouTube

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Next Tuesday, I'm going to the AI Tinkerers meetup in PDX. Join me??? AI Tinkerers is a new AI event that's focused on fun, technical learning, sharing, and entrepreneurship. It's an event for those actively hacking, making, or starting up. No pitch decks, no validation, and there's no VC involvement. The focus is on practical, technical meetings where everyone can share learnings and contribute to a true community. Surj Patel, who previously ran the ThingPDX IoT meetup with 1500 members, is organizing this. Meetings will be on Tuesdays, starting with the first one on July 23rd at 6 PM, doors opening at 5 PM at the PastLives Space. There are already four confirmed speakers, and more are welcome. Talks are short (5-10 minutes) and focus on demos and practical assistance, especially technical help. Register at https://lnkd.in/eRZP9dps or find the event on Meetup.com.

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Build transparently. This is one of the core values at PDS Lab and now, theanna.io. A little anecdote before I explain what I'm going to do. When I got really into product development about 5-7 years ago, I became obsessed with people who built in public. I followed them on LinkedIn and always thought how helpful it was to learn from them. (ps. they were all men, I never saw a woman doing this) I'd watch these men talk about code mistakes and finding customers and then interact with people who had questions. And I would tell myself, one day I'm going to do that. I want other people to learn from me failing and doing things. It's fun when you feel like you're building with people. So fast forward to today, I started the lab to help women build. The way I led my core value of building transparently was just literally building alongside every founder at the lab. I'm doing it today. I'm learning from them, and hopefully, they feel like they're learning from me too. Now, at theanna.io, I'm about to embark on a 14ish week journey of building before launch. I've signed up for Customer.io and every single week, I will document my journey to the founders. I have never seen a woman do this, and I thought, why not me? I have nothing to lose here. Well, maybe I do. But who cares, we live once and I want to build a company in a way that feels very aligned with my personal goals and dreams. And that is... transparently. I want to share what I'm doing, how I'm making decisions, how I'm messing up, where I'm struggling, what I'm testing, everything. Because I know that if I do that, someone who hasn't been on the journey yet will learn something. Currently, I have 35% of my user base "aspiring" to be a tech founder. They're at the idea stage and I want to help them launch as fast as possible. And I know if I build transparently, it can help them! So, next week is "Week 1" building transparently to each of you on this list. Some would gasp I'm even showing this data to you.. but how will you know if there is any value in what I'm building if I'm not honest with you?! Let's go ladies, it's our time! -- I'm Nomiki - the founder of PDS Lab, a tech accelerator for women, and theanna.io, a data-driven network activating women tech founders from $0- $1M ARR. I'm on a mission to bring access to all women tech founders, close the gender gap, and support women build products that change the world. Follow me on my journey as a tech founder, accelerator builder, and mom of 4.

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There is a LOT of valuable, first-principles stuff in this one for #startup #founders, including: - How to properly scope your company for market opportunity - How to think about creating categories - How to use value to guide product development Many thanks to the founders and leaders that Heavybit interviewed for their insights. We'll have more extremely candid advice for founders on how to build a community and how to manage a startup (and your own emotions and sanity) day-to-day in future updates.

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Even with more than decade in tech, I needed a way to keep up with Al's rapid evolution. That's why I created a public knowledge base documenting everything l'm learning about generative Al. Inside, you'll find: •   Artifacts from my Al experiments •   Prompt patterns for creative Al interaction •   Key Al concepts explained •   Curated Al learning resources •   My daily log, openly sharing my personal Al learning journey Most valuable lesson: The "obvious" solutions we create for ourselves often unlock breakthroughs for others. What seems basic to you might be exactly what someone else needs. I'm building this resource in public every day. The knowledge base complements my weekly newsletter, providing a home for deeper technical details. I hope you get some value from it. Here's the link: https://ai.unknownarts.co What Al learning resources have helped you the most? I'd love to know!

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Notion vs Glean reminds me a lot of Tesla vs Waymo... Just like I think Tesla is going to solve the 'software' problem of autonomous vehicles before Waywmo solves the 'hardware' problem... I think that Notion is going to solve 'enterprise knowledge search' before Glean solves the problem of document and knowledge creation... Why? A couple reasons: 1) Just like Tesla, Notion has a huge advantage when it comes to the amount of underlying data and documents to train on... They already have 100M+ users, and likely 10x that in terms of the number of documents, files, etc. in team's workspaces. 2) It's very hard to change people's behaviour re: where/how they create 'work'. It's why a lot of companies have come and gone in that category... As exciting as Glean's AI writing assistants might seem, most people are just fine (or even prefer) a good old fashioned editor/writer. I could be way off here, but this will be an intersting one to follow. Thoughts? Where am I getting it wrong? #ai #enterprise #knowledge #management #notion #glean

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CBO Interviews: Mladen M. Hoyss on Shaping the Future of Nothing OS | https://lnkd.in/eFyYx9n6 Getting the chance to talk with Mladen was a surreal opportunity, and I’m truly grateful to the Nothing community for choosing me to be their voice. It’s moments like these that bring my journey full circle. My history with Mladen’s work goes back to the early days of Blloc. While I couldn’t use the Zero18 phone, I’ve been following Blloc since the beginning. I got into the closed beta testing of Ratio, their minimalist launcher. At that time, I was heavily addicted to my smartphone. Ratio had a profound impact on my usage habits, significantly reducing my screen time. I was so impressed that I continued using it across three to four different phones, often proudly sharing screenshots of my reduced screen time on social media. When I heard about Mladen M Hoyss joining Nothing I thought, “This is a collaboration that was bound to happen.” The transition from Ratio to Nothing OS has been an evolution in my smartphone experience. It’s fascinating to see how Mladen’s philosophy has been integrated into a more comprehensive and fun environment at Nothing while still maintaining the core principles of mindful technology use. This interview has not only provided insights into Nothing’s design philosophy, but also allowed me to connect the dots in my personal journey with mindful technology use. I’m excited to see how Nothing continues to evolve and grateful for the opportunity to be part of this community-driven conversation about the future of technology. #NothingCommunity #NothingOS

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Bias is still a big problem with LLMs. They’re trained on content created by humans after all… And human’s we’re… well… “really good at generalizing” to put it nicely… 😬 The fallout is that you need to be very careful when you’re asking AI to give you any kind of subjective output. Let’s look at a community example. Imagine you want to create a weekly digest of the best discussions that took place in your community. (Now you could reach out to us at Knobi to build/host/run that process for you! 😉 But let’s say you want to do it yourself.) You could pass multiple threads to an LLM and ask it to pick out the “best” for you. But you’ll find that even a task as simple as picking a “good convo” is going to fall prey to some bias. A conversation - for example - with incredibly interesting content might not be chosen if it also has a lot of typos or heavy use of slang. At worst you’re going to end up suppressing certain voices... ...and at best you still risk missing great content for dumb reasons. So what do you do? Ask for facts. Define what you mean by a good conversation. And ask the LLM to answer questions relevant to your definition and your community, like: - Is there industry news shared in this thread? - Did multiple users share perspective in this thread? - Did the OP thank someone for their contribution? etc… And rank content that way. (Note: Langchain’s “structured output chains” are one easy way to do this). We’ve got a long way to go re: bias in AI. And there are some cases where that's still too much of an issue to implement. But in the right context we can mitigate it. And we're making progress.

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As we refine AI legislation, crucial questions arise: What defines an AI developer? How do we classify safety and risk? I'm baffled by the notion that prioritizing safety hampers AI innovation—it's an argument I find completely unfounded. Ignoring safety allows AI to reinforce societal biases, causing more harm than good. Believing AI alone can eradicate biases and automatically foster equity and trust is a misconception. As AI is still in its early stages, it's imperative we focus on long-term benefits over quick financial gains. Building AI responsibly is essential to ensure our technological progress truly makes society fairer and safer. #AI #Innovation #ResponsibleAI #TechnologyEthics https://lnkd.in/dS5Yi5yE

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Pathways to Tech Week #2 at  Headstarter: Being surrounded by people who are building amazing software and companies is a truly inspiring experience. My favorite speakers were: • Tariq Ahmed: First Engineer at AppLovin ($30Billion IPO) • Julian Alvarez 🚀: CEO of Wisdolia • Hamza Ali: CEO of Olostep  Here's what I have learned from them: 𝟭- "𝗙𝗮𝗶𝗹𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝗶𝘃𝗼𝘁" Tariq, one of the first engineers at AppLovin, shared that AppLovin tried several things in their early stages that failed. However, the company had incredible success when it pivoted to mobile advertising; They didn't have expertise in the field. Today if you've experienced in-app advertising, AppLovin was likely behind it. 𝟮- "𝗦𝘁𝘂𝗱𝘆 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘂𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘀, 𝘆𝗼𝘂'𝗹𝗹 𝗯𝗲 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗰𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝗺𝘂𝗰𝗵 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻." Julian runs Wisdolia a startup aimed at helping college students actively study. By simply asking what types of students they were. His team found that medical students were the ones the ones who converted the most into paying customers. It seemed evident because they were the most overwhelmed by the amount of information they had cram. But the evidence in their face was a lightbulb moment for Wisdolia. 𝟯- "𝗦𝗰𝗿𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘄𝗲'𝗹𝗹 𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗳𝗮𝗿." Hamza, CEO of Olostep, describes his company as "a company that enables AI agents to browse the web just like humans". I was fascinated when I heard that, and as the Olostep team acquires more customers they value scrappy and people that initiative on board. Those qualities set engineers apart when building successful products.

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Learn from your success as much as your failure. SpaceX is forced to do it more than any other industry. "What did we do right?" is just as important as "What did we do wrong", but it's so much easier to reflect on what went wrong. They just parallel parked a high-rise building to a skyscraper!! ...and they'll be analyzing and pouring over the data from their success yesterday for quite some time. "All your success is not your fault" is a quote I love from Scott Galloway How lucky were you? How many things could have gone wrong? How much did you really do to prevent that?

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