[pdevr]

Observations and personal opinions, after glancing through the slides:

* The entertainment industry will be transformed drastically. Music and movies will be transformed by AI to such an extent that the next generation will find it hard to believe how the industry operated.

* The moonshot will be biological research and research in general. When a breakthrough happens, it will transform our health for the better in astonishing ways.

* In terms of direct adoption, the urban-rural divide is vast.

* Less democratic countries will have an advantage over the democratic countries in terms of fast execution, unless the latter manage to integrate private-public operations effectively.

* I've liked Mary Meeker's reports since the heydays of TechCrunch. This report has a lot of details that I did not know. Nevertheless, I didn't see a single point that stood out.

[psychoslave]

> Less democratic countries will have an advantage over the democratic countries in terms of fast execution, unless the latter manage to integrate private-public operations effectively.

This argument is like a classic. But on which time frame is it supposed to be operative? Is that back with any empirical data to test the claim?

Less involvement of edge nodes in the decision process is also encouraging "don't give a shit to suggest improvements" and "utter whatever lie is expected by the system to avoid claims of dissidence".

There are actual pragmatic benefits in democratic systems, it's not only pure idealistic motivation at stake that can argue in their favor.

[adventured]

There are exceptionally few less democratic countries that are functional in a manner such that they can take great advantage of the AI potential, much less execute in some sort of super fast manner compared to the democratic nations. You can count those less democratic nations on one hand.

It's overwhelmingly the case that affluence and national wealth goes hand in hand with greater democracy, there is a tight correlation (and of course there are exceptions). All you need to do is look at the top ~50 nations in terms of GDP per capita or median wealth per adult, then look at the bottom 50.

Less democratic nations will be left even further behind, as the richer democratic nations race ahead as they have been doing for most of the post WW2 era. The richer democratic nations will have the resources to make the required enormous investments. The more malevolent less democratic nations will of course make use of good-enough AI to do malicious things, not much about that will change. Their power position won't fundamentally change however.

[twoodfin]

The Waymo v. Lyft v. Uber (page 302) trends in SF surprised me.

Having never ridden in a Waymo, I’m curious if anyone sees a reason those trends won’t continue in SF or replicate elsewhere.

[jppope]

they will continue in the American west/southwest which have decent predictable road infrastructure, weather, and driving behavior... not a lot of pedestrians or snow in Phoenix (though some pedestrians in SF).

It will be a while before philly or Boston gets Waymo.

[basisword]

>> The entertainment industry will be transformed drastically. Music and movies will be transformed by AI to such an extent that the next generation will find it hard to believe how the industry operated.

As someone who was very worried about how this would impact artistic output I've started to change my mind. It seems younger people are extremely sensitive to AI content and happy to call out anything that could conceivably be generated by AI as slop. People want real art created by real people with real skill. They want to be able to connect with their art and connect with them in person. The muzak industry is in trouble but I no longer think music in general will be replaced by AI. We'll see improvements to software instruments, plugins etc but AI improving the tools is a different prospect than fully AI generated music.

[HDThoreaun]

I disagree. In my experience the best art is almost always created or at least masterminded by a single person or small team. AI will allow these visionaries to create high fidelity content without engaging with the Hollywood machine. I view it as an incredible democratization of art that will allow the best ideas to rise in conjunction with apps like tiktok that are quickly able to find the most entertaining content posted by anyone and share it widely.

In music I think its similar to the claim that people using samples arent real musicians. Its a take many will have, but many others will have no problem enjoying stuff created with the help of AI.

[antithesizer]

Yeah, the "call out AI in solidarity with working artists" thing is a fad. All Hollywood or anybody else has to do to get around that impulse is present AI-based content as indie production for whom there was never any question of hiring people to make everything by hand. That's the narrative small business has always used to garner sympathy despite poor working conditions and compensation: we either cut corners or we don't exist at all. And with AI media there will immediately be a trade-off of technical quality in favor of quirky creativity, which will humanize the first critically lauded generation of AI film, etc. and ultimately neutralize the prevailing squeamishness for overtly AI generated content.

[ghaff]

Mary's reports are always interesting reads. That said, the Internet (and now AI) is a significantly less mysterious area than it used to be so I think there are, as a consequence, fewer surprises lurking than there used to be.