10X: The Magic Factor
February 27, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
The 10X engineer. The 10X payout. The 10X advertising impact. The 10X factor can apply to money, people, and processes. Flip to the inverse and one can use smart software to replace the engineers who are not 10X or — more optimistically — lift those expensive digital humanoids to a higher level. It is magical: Win either way, provided you are a top dog a one percenter. Applied to money, 10X means winner. End up with $0.10, and the hapless investor is a loser. For processes, figuring out a 10X trick, and you are a winner, although one who is misunderstood. Money matters more than machine efficiency to some people.
In pursuit of a 10X payoff, will the people end up under water? Thanks, ImageFX. Good enough.
These are my 10X thoughts after I read “Groq, Gemini, and 10X Improvements.” The essay focuses on things technical. I am going to skip over what the author offers as a well-reasoned, dispassionate commentary on 10X. I want to zip to one passage which I think is quite fascinating. Here it is:
We don’t know when increasing parameters or datasets will plateau. We don’t know when we’ll discover the next breakthrough architecture akin to Transformers. And we don’t know how good GPUs, or LPUs, or whatever else we’re going to have, will become. Yet, when when you consider that Moore’s Law held for decades… suddenly Sam Altman’s goal of raising seven trillion dollars to build AI chips seems a little less crazy.
The way I read this is that unknowns exist with AI, money, and processes. For me, the unknowns are somewhat formidable. For many, charging into the unknown does not cause sleepless nights. Talking about raising trillions of dollars which is a large pile of silver dollars.
One must take the $7 trillion and Sam AI-Man seriously. In June 2023, Sam AI-Man met the boss of Softbank. Today (February 22, 2024) rumors about a deal related to raising the trillions required for OpenAI to build chips and fulfill its promise have reached my research team. If true, will there be a 10X payoff, which noses into spitting distance of 15 zeros. If that goes inverse, that’s going to create a bad day for someone.
Stephen E Arnold, February 27, 2024
Comments
Got something to say?
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
