Good morning, team. This is The Neuron. We're a daily newsletter that keeps you topped up on coffee and what's going on in AI.
Today in AI:
- How AI Changes the Game for the Economy
- For Devs, Copilot Is Only Just the Beginning
- Around the Horn
- Leo Sends His Regards
How AI Changes the Game for the Economy
Brush off your Econ 101 hat.
Welcome to lecture. I am Professor L'Orange.
Here's what happens with new technology:
- New technology lets us produce more ideas if we invest a certain amount of money
- We invest more money to take advantage of the tech
- More ideas produced and economy grows faster
- Faster growth leads to more money and investment
- Jump to step 2 and repeat
That dynamic is what researchers expect will happen once every scientific field supercharges their research with AI.
The effect? Since 1948, US productivity growth has averaged 1.2%. These researchers estimate that could double to 2.4% because of AI. Holy smokes.
When we talk about AI, the most impact will come from enabling faster R&D. We're talking protein folding, drug discovery, materials research and chip design.
So while we love playing with AI tools that help us write emails faster, we're extra jazzed about startups enabling science to go faster.
A richer economy awaits!
For Devs, Copilot Is Only Just the Beginning
I wish I loved something as much as developers love Copilot.
But software engineering is way more than just writing the code.
It involves reading a lot of code to understand the system. Only then can you write anything that works, let alone test and troubleshoot it.
Plus, all of this gets way harder with larger and larger systems. Almost as hard as untangling one of these things. Yeesh.
So we need more than Copilot. Jay Hack and Dan Robinson are both taking their shots with products tackling this idea.
Using AI, you can:
- Ask it how the system works
- Have it point you to the specific code that does something
- Have it draft code changes for you, even ones that affect major parts of the system.
This is AI that helps you be an engineer not just a coder.
Know an engineer in your life? Send them the waitlist signups for Jay's Tensai and Dan's qqbot.
What about GitHub? They're not ignoring this! They've been working on an expanded scope of Copilot since October. But, that's still a code autocomplete, while both of these take inspiration from ChatGPT.
Around the Horn
- StabilityAI opens a physical presence in Japan and hires a guy who can speak four languages to lead the office.
- Here's an app that can help you change the tone and style of your writing. Go ahead and write what you feel when your coworker pisses you off - just use this before you send it.
- Use this app to create beautiful Zoom backgrounds with AI.
- What Stanford's AI faculty is predicting for 2023 in AI.
Leo Sends His Regards
