Liron Shapira Profile picture
Aug 2, 2022 6 tweets 5 min read Read on X
.@Helium supporters have been accusing me of FUD.

To encourage one another to stay positive, they cite exciting corporate partnerships such as... @Goodyear Tire & Rubber.

Maybe I can help them perform a sanity check before they pin their hopes on this promising "customer".
Believers of the Goodyear/Helium partnership envision a future where your vehicle connects to the internet... through its tires.

Inspiring.

I'd hate to burst their bubble that a Goodyear Ventures investment with the goal to "learn about new mobility" isn't proof of real demand.
To learn more, I watched this presentation by @AbhijitCVC of Goodyear Ventures:

Does Goodyear have a plan for giving tire sensor devices their own internet connection?

Not really, says Abhijit: "Assume we have the right sensors, and we don't yet..."
This slide presents Goodyear's next steps. They're going to "explore use cases", i.e. they don't yet have a clear one.

When you're pinning your hopes on a vague, futuristic-sounding slide from a corporate VC, you're on track to be a #BloatedMVP of Goodyear Blimp proportions.
I'm not spreading gratuitous FUD here. I've just heard enough startup pitches to call out the #HollowAbstractions.

The reality on the ground is that Goodyear has no compelling use case. Neither does Helium's LoRaWAN network to date.

I fixed that tweet for you, @AbhijitCVC.
@AbhijitCVC .@AbhijitCVC thanks for the pic of your team gluing a sensor to a tire, but the key question that remains unvalidated is whether a car's tires should be architected to connect directly to the internet using a decentralized network of LoRa hotspots.

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More from @liron

May 23
🤔 How did Farcaster, a small crypto/Web3 version of Twitter, just raise $150M at a $1B valuation?

Dune Analytics says they have 45k daily active users, which is microscopic.

But even that number is MASSIVELY inflated by spambots.

How & why I think @a16z is siphoning money 🧵Image
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What kind of user-generated content is being posted to Farcaster?

Basically imagine reading through a crypto-themed Discord server, but reskinning the interface so it's like you're reading Twitter.

I saw a trickle of content from real users, and spambots using generative AI 👇
Why did VCs like @a16z think $1B is an appealing valuation for a startup whose active user base is comparable to that of a niche Discord sever?

Are we suddenly in another crypto bubble, where everyone is a paper unicorn again?

I think there are 3 explanations…
Read 18 tweets
Oct 7, 2023
Dario Amodei's P(doom) is 10–25%.

CEO and Co-Founder of @AnthropicAI.
“I often try to focus on the 75–90% chance where things will go right.” Image
From today's @loganbartshow, worth a watch:
Read 5 tweets
Jul 14, 2023
Marc Andreessen (@pmarca)'s recent essay, “Why AI Will Save the World”, didn't meet the standards of discourse. ♦️

Claiming AI will be safe & net positive is his right, but the way he’s gone about making that claim has been undermining conversation quality.

🧵 Here's the proof: https://t.co/2o3gUgmuqXtwitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Image
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1. BULVERISM

Marc indulges in constant Bulverism:

He spends much time labeling and psychoanalyzing the people who disagree with him, instead of focusing on the substance of why he thinks their object-level claims are wrong and his are right.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulverism
He accuses AI doomers of being “bootleggers”, which he explains means “self-interested opportunists who stand to financially profit” from claiming AI x-risk is a serious worry:

“If you are paid a salary or receive grants to foster AI panic… you are probably a Bootlegger.”
Read 36 tweets
Jun 22, 2023
Thread of @pmarca's logically-flimsy AGI survivability claims 🧵
Claim 1:

Marc claims it’s a “category error” to argue that a math-based system will have human-like properties — that rogue AI is a 𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘰𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵 concept.

Actually, an AI might overpower humanity, or it might not. Either outcome is logically coherent.
Claim 2:

Marc claims rogue unaligned superintelligent AI is unlikely because AIs can "engage in moral thinking".

But what happens when a superintelligent goal-optimizing AI is run with anything less than perfect morality?

That's when we risk permanently disempowering humanity.
Read 10 tweets
May 18, 2023
Incredibly high-stakes claim from OpenAI’s alignment team lead.

If he’s wrong, he’s a killer.
The former safety lead at OpenAI isn’t confident in the tractability of the problem.
OpenAI, like other AI cos, act like they don't need stricter assurance of any hope of alignment.

They act like burning the remaining time to superintelligence is an acceptable move.

Just because this assumption is normally not questioned, doesn't mean it's not fatal if wrong.
Read 5 tweets
May 18, 2023
Important debate happening between @sama and @ESYudkowsky via their respective podcast interviews:
Sam's interview with Bari Weiss: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ai-…
Eliezer's interview on @loganbartshow:
Read 4 tweets

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