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Sunday Signal: Meta releases Llama 3, a few thoughts on intensity and treating relationships like investments

Author

Alex Banks
April 28, 2024

Hey friends 👋 Happy Sunday.

Here’s your weekly dose of AI and introspection.

AI Highlights

Meta has released Llama 3, their most capable open LLM to date. Whilst the model has 70 billion parameters, Meta is training a version of Llama 3 with 400 billion that is almost equally capable as GPT-4.

Alex’s take: It's important to remember that many people are still blissfully unaware of ChatGPT and GPT-3.5. I can only feel that integrating Llama 3 into Meta's products (WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook) will skyrocket AI adoption.

Profluent has trained an LLM on a massive amount of biological data. OpenCRISPR-1 is now the world’s first AI-generated human gene editor.

Alex’s take: For all the ‘ChatGPT wrappers’ popping up, gene editing presents a 0→1 opportunity to fundamentally change the blueprint that makes us human: our DNA. We are one step closer to AI designing exactly what’s needed to create bespoke disease cures, and this excites me.

DeepFacelive lets you change your face in real-time during live broadcasts and video calls. It allows you to adjust your facial expressions or entire appearance, control static facial images, and manipulate them through your own face.

Alex’s take: We've seen another example of face swapping pop up in April 2024 with Microsoft's hyper-realistic talking head AI: VASA-1. I believe proof of authenticity will be absolutely necessary to solve what is coming.

1 Article I Enjoyed

I recently stumbled on this punchy tweet by Tyler Hogge.

It led me to his blog article, “A few thoughts on intensity,” where he shares the most important trait of a successful startup.

Tyler has been an early member of three exceptional startups, each with a culture of intensity. They are now worth over $10 billion in aggregate.

My favourite takeaways:

  • Startups are dead by default. Only through intensity can something be created out of thin air that grows to be worth billions of dollars in just a few years.

  • Intensity is a layer across all other characteristics, including intelligence, charisma, and positivity.

  • Intensity is best summarised by Frank Slootman, the CEO of Snowflake: narrow the focus, up the quality, increase the speed.

We highlighted this trait a few weeks ago, with intensity being a core characteristic of Steve Jobs. As a founder, it’s your job to drive the ship forward. Intensity fuels your engine.

1 Idea I Learned

On relationship building.

Treat relationships like investments. The more you put in earlier, the more you get out later.

Give value to people, and they'll look for ways to give back.

A strong network will connect you to anything you want to do.

1 Quote to Share

Peter Thiel on being relentless:

“What I think people like Zuckerburg or Musk or Jeff Bezos at Amazon have in common is that they’re relentless. They don’t stop. Every day, they start over, do more, get better at it. People often ask whether Facebook was just a fluke, in the right place at the right time.

But I think the more you get to know Mark or founders like him, the less plausible it becomes. And that’s, in part, because you can see how hard he works, how much planning it was, how much of a vision there was from the very beginning.”

1 Question to Ponder

What would you immediately stop doing if you fired yourself today and took over your life from scratch?

💡 If you enjoyed this issue, share it with a friend.

See you next week,

Alex Banks