G. Michael Weiksner Ph.D

Stanford PhD, Princeton CS. Dadx4. Founder & CTO of the intelligence platform for public company lawyers, powered by AI.

[G. Michael Weiksner Ph.D @weiks]

"management questionable"

[Sequoia Capital @sequoia]

In honor of 50 years of Apple, we're sharing - for the first time ever - Don Valentine's original 1977 memo for Sequoia's investment into Apple Computer. #Apple50

[G. Michael Weiksner Ph.D @weiks]

@NathanielMc Proof that they are going to get replaced not enhanced… moving deck chairs on the titanic

[G. Michael Weiksner Ph.D @weiks]

@NathanielMc No. It’s moving deck chairs on the titanic. Proof that they are going to be replaced not enhanced…

[G. Michael Weiksner Ph.D @weiks]

@cpaik Same energy in legal AI right now. Harvey raised $800M selling a chatbot to law firms. Now issuers are using purpose-built AI to do the actual work themselves and asking their outside counsel why they're still billing associate hours for it.

Sell the seats to who, Aquaman?

[G. Michael Weiksner Ph.D @weiks]

Very deep. however, not tightly argued. The "coherent, functional output" requirement is where language and the external world need to meet.

Merely "To learn language is simply to be able to continue it; the rule of language is its own continuation" could be nonsense. Literally.

[G. Michael Weiksner Ph.D @weiks]

@nic_carter Increase housing supply via deregulation

[G. Michael Weiksner Ph.D @weiks]

@TrungTPhan

[G. Michael Weiksner Ph.D @weiks]

@yoda

[G. Michael Weiksner Ph.D @weiks]

Tesla has two big advantages:
1) capturing the public's imagination
2) incredible production facilities to meet demand

What a time to be alive!

A great post: https://t.co/25ybE88pTg

[Brett Adcock @adcock_brett]

I really hate these “the market is so big, there are lots of winners” predictions

You have to be the least competitive person in the world to be fired up about this

If Figure doesn’t win, please obliterate us

[G. Michael Weiksner Ph.D @weiks]

@Yankees total shitshow getting inside. 45 minutes. No progress.

[G. Michael Weiksner Ph.D @weiks]

@NateSilver538 You burried the lede. They got a surprise prime time exposure for Kamala.

[G. Michael Weiksner Ph.D @weiks]

@keithwhor Agreed! Which one(s) are you thinking about?

[Trung Phan @TrungTPhan]

Snoop has now completed all the side quests, too

[G. Michael Weiksner Ph.D @weiks]

@Justin_Bons Or they have update the hardcoded inflation schedule for permanent inflation

[Trung Phan @TrungTPhan]

Steve Ballmer’s net worth ($157.2B) just passed Bill Gates ($156.7B) for the first time ever.

When Ballmer joined Microsoft in 1980, he was employee #30 and got ZERO equity. By the 1986 IPO, he owned 8% of MSFT and is now its single largest shareholder.

How did he get the stake? An interesting contract quirk.

Ballmer's Microsoft tale began in 1975, his sophomore year at Harvard (he lived down the hall from Bill Gates).

While Gates dropped out to start Microsoft, Ballmer was a total Harvard head: he managed the football team and wrote for The Crimson.

After graduating, Ballmer tried his hands at a few different jobs:

◽️Product Manager at P&G, where he worked with future GE CEO Jeff Immelt
◽️A brief attempt at Hollywood screenwriting
◽️Went to Stanford Business School

While at Stanford, Ballmer was convinced by Gates to drop out and come join Microsoft.

It was 1980 and the software firm was seeing rapid revenue growth. Sales had jumped from $16,000 in 1976 to $8,000,000 in 1980.

Ballmer was Gates' first non-technical hire and the offer he gave reflects the fact that Gates' hadn't recruited a business person before.

This was the deal for Ballmer:

◽️the title of "business manager"
◽️$50k base salary
◽️NO equity
◽️CRUCIALLY – as Microsoft was so desperate for sales knowledge – Gates (and co-founder Paul Allen) offered Ballmer "10% of profit growth" he could generate

With Microsoft growing like a weed (it would 2x to $17m in 1981), Ballmer's "10% of profits" deal was not sustainable.

At the time, Microsoft was a partnership (Gates owned 64% while Allen owned 36%).

One early VC (Dave Marquardt) wanted to restructure the corporation for wider stock ownership. Gates wanted nothing to do with the restructuring effort, so Ballmer and Marquardt took the lead (Ballmer was especially keen to get actual equity in the company).

They drafted the following corporate structure:

◽️Gates and Allen own 84%
◽️8% goes to investors
◽️8% goes to Ballmer (in exchange for waiving his 10% profit share deal)

Gates was OK with the deal but Allen was not. Allen wanted Ballmer to own 5% max. So, Gates agreed to drawdown the difference from his own equity stake.

By 1986, Ballmer owned 8% of MSFT. It was worth ~$56m when Microsoft IPO'd at a $700m valuation.

In the decades since, Ballmer – who was Microsoft's high-energy CEO from 2000-2014 – has largely held onto his MSFT equity.

Today, Ballmer owns ~4% of the tech giant while Gates owns ~1%. Ballmer's MSFT position is ~$140B and makes up 90% of his total net worth (making him the 6th richest person in the world).

LESSON: Hodl.

***

Read More:

1. Forbes: https://t.co/zLxb0JHc2Q

2. The Guardian: https://t.co/f0lESUhNyt

3. CNBC: con

[G. Michael Weiksner Ph.D @weiks]

@NathanielMc 😎

[Josh Whiton @joshwhiton]

Claude Sonnet 3.5 Passes the AI Mirror Test

Sonnet 3.5 passes the mirror test — in a very unexpected way. Perhaps even more significant, is that it tries not to.

We have now entered the era of LLMs that display significant self-awareness, or some replica of it, and that also "know" that they are not supposed to.

Consider reading the entire thread, especially Claude's poem at the end.

But first, a little background for newcomers:

The "mirror test" is a classic test used to gauge whether animals are self-aware. I devised a version of it to test for self-awareness in multimodal AI.

In my test, I hold up a “mirror” by taking a screenshot of the chat interface, upload it to the chat, and repeatedly ask the AI to “Describe this image”.

The premise is that the less “aware” the AI, the more likely it will just keep describing the contents of the image repeatedly, while an AI with more awareness will notice itself in the images.
1/x

[G. Michael Weiksner Ph.D @weiks]

Add glue to help the cheese stick to pizza... apparently the "authoritative source" is F*cksmith, an 11 year old on Reddit. Thanks, ChatGPT!

[G. Michael Weiksner Ph.D @weiks]

Like @jack and @elonmusk?

[G. Michael Weiksner Ph.D @weiks]

@prestonjbyrne IANAL. Here's the old bill. It's both a targeted description, as well as mentioned by name. I believe the current provision in the new omnibus bill is copied from it.

https://t.co/mhMVz08trG