Paul Graham
Co-founder of Y Combinator and Viaweb; essayist at paulgraham.com.
Paul Graham did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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discipline 4venture capital 4America 3war 3AGI 2AI and jobs 2capitalism 2data centers 2humility 2optimism 2simplicity 2space 2agency 1AI agents 1AI alignment 1AI writing 1attitude change 1benchmarks 1China 1curiosity 1education 1empathy 1energy 1friendship 1Google 1hiring 1innovation 1measuring intelligence 1OpenAI 1politics 1price gouging 1Silicon Valley 1team size 1
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Their wordsBefore it became possible to get rich by creating wealth, the way to do it was to be on the winning side in a military or political dispute.
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Their wordsThere are two possible explanations: (a) the investors actually are stupid, or (b) they just dislike you, and are making up the reason.
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Their wordsIt's not unusual for startups to grow 10x in a year, but to keep it up for 3 years is close to unheard of.
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Their wordsAt this point, nearly all of it. I can't promise that will be true in 10 years, but at this moment, starting a startup is much the same as always.
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Their wordsPeople will want agents to buy stuff for them. It will be one of the main use cases.
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Their wordsOrganizations can become somewhat aligned with AI by using AI-powered apps, but the deepest change takes the form of code.
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Their wordsOne very important thing that even the smartest people seem to have to learn from experience is taste in problems.
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Their wordsThere are juicy problems that tend to lead to interesting discoveries, and nasty problems that tend not to.
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Their wordsA company name that appeals to corporate buyers may not appeal so much to their customers.
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Their wordsIn England, students choose just a few subjects (usually 3) to study in the last 2 years of high school, so gender differences in their interests become more visible than in the US.
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Their wordsThe skeptics who say AI can't conjecture, can't theorize, and can't explain are describing last spring's models.
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Their wordsWe're about to find out what all of them are, as they break.
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Our reading
Many things only worked because there is a limit to the rate at which humans can operate.
AI and jobsagencyAI and human skill
Their wordsThere were a lot of things that only worked because there's a limit to the rate at which humans can operate.
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Their wordsIt can be surprisingly powerful not to stream or even record a talk.
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Their wordsDon't start a startup expecting you'll go to college (or back to college) afterward. Those two paths are incompatible, and you're lying to yourself if you try to pretend otherwise.
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Their wordsWe'll start by calling it thinking, then gradually acknowledge it is.
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Their wordsWhat's the use of a style guide that doesn't understand current educated usage? Usage is the whole point of a style guide.
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Their wordsIf you know anyone looking for a good and fairly AI-proof career, watchmaker (= watch repairer) seems a promising one. Every watchmaker seems to have more work than he can handle, mechanical watches are increasingly popular, and it will be a while before AI does this.
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Their wordsFor example, there will probably be one variant meant to filter out agents, but another meant to welcome them in an orderly way.
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Their wordsThe war made round watches fashionable (because all military watches were round).
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Their wordsI said probably at either extreme: either close to the technology, actually making LLMs, or close to the customer, using AI to give them exactly what they want.
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Our reading
Prewar watch movements were often designed to fit the rectangular cases that were fashionable then.
Their wordsPrewar movements were often designed to fit in the rectangular cases that were in fashion then.
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Their wordsBack in the day, music and drugs were inseparable to a degree people would find hard to grasp today.
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Their wordsThe Democrats lack all conviction, while the Republicans are full of passionate intensity.
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Their wordsThe reason so many people look for an ulterior motive for the AI labs asking to be regulated is that they don't grasp that models could be dangerous.
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Our reading
Shakespearean acting requires overacting due to the difficulty of the language for modern audiences.
Their wordsYou have to overact when doing Shakespeare, because the language is now so hard for audiences to understand.
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Their wordsIt's isn't just to people with ADHD that this happens. Some tasks inherently take a certain amount of time. An appointment that breaks the afternoon into two blocks of time could leave you with no block long enough to complete a task.
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measuring intelligencebenchmarks
Their wordsSomeone needs to define the unit, perhaps using a chain of increasingly hard problems, each pair of which can be solved by a single model.
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Their wordsAlthough you pay for AI by the token, that's not the unit of inference, because you get more problem solving per token as models improve.
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Our reading
Technology is making everyone richer, as illustrated by lighting costs falling over 1000x.
Their wordsOne data point in technology making everyone richer: the cost of lighting has decreased by over 1000x.