Andreessen Horowitz

Mira Murati, CEO of Thinking Machines Lab, says human-AI collaboration needs models that can listen while they think: "The types of models that we work with today, they're very turn-based. You talk, they talk, then they go off and think." "While they're thinking, it's almost like they're deaf and blind. They cannot perceive anything else about what's going on." "By contrast, our interactions with each other are very rich. There is a lot of information in our interactions when we are silent, when we're thinking, when we're interrupting one another." "Interaction models are able to capture all of this nuance. They're not turn-based. They're more like time-based interaction, where they're continuously taking in audio, text, video, and continuously providing output." "This enables you to catch things like interruptions and simultaneous speech, and really create a rich, high bandwidth interaction between humans and machines." At Bloomberg Tech live with Emily Chang

Data centers are already consuming more power, and they’re going to need a lot more going forward

Ben Horowitz on a CEO's most important operational responsibility:

Mira Murati, CEO of Thinking Machines Lab, says frontier AI should be built like a tandem bike: "Having humans in the loop doesn't quite describe it because it sounds like a checkpoint where we're signing off something, and then you're good to go." "It's more like creating systems that are not just autonomously advancing and leaving civilization behind, but are more like a tandem bike." "When you're going up a hill, maybe whoever is stronger is pedaling harder. But both hands are on the wheel. That's quite important because that's a different system. It's a system designed for collaboration." "It will increase the level of agency that people have, and also it will help us steer the research direction towards creating outputs that are more value-aligned." At Bloomberg Tech live with Emily Chang

Texas has more autonomous vehicle operations than any other state in the country — 26 in total, across 13 distinct operators. In five cities, you can already hail a self-driving taxi or ride a self-driving truck.

Small businesses with headcount are out-adopting AI than those without is not exactly what the “AI solopreneur” theory would expect to see. Still, the data does support the theory in at least one respect: larger solo businesses are out-adopting smaller ones by a pretty substantial margin, and the gap has widened, of late. It’s obviously too soon to tell (and one data series is hardly dispositive), but perhaps we’re in the early innings of an “AI solopreneur power user” wave, afterall. Not all one-person businesses are using AI, but the ones with more revenue are more likely to be using AI than the ones with less.

This week’s latest funding rounds. A new wave of founders is building AI for the industries that keep America running. From MEP engineering and drone motors to doctor’s offices, workplace productivity, and critical industrial operations. Backed by major Series A and seed rounds, these startups are applying AI to real-world infrastructure.

Marc Andreessen: "Everywhere we go, people want to talk about tech, they want to learn about tech." "When Ben wrote his book and went on a tour, it didn't matter what country he went to, thousands of kids show up and they want to learn how to do this." "The internet had a big impact there, which is, every kid anywhere in the world now can watch Peter Thiel talks and our podcast and everything else." "Global knowledge is way up. Global enthusiasm is way up. Relevance to societies is way up." "There's human capital everywhere... The startup process is a way to especially get smart young people to kind of do ambitious things."

WFH is predictive of a declining share of junior hiring (and “low-experience” job posting), even when controlling for AI. At the same time, all the predictive power of AI-exposure goes away, once you control for WFH. Put it all together, and there’s at least some evidence that when firms have the ability to hire remotely, they tend to favor experienced workers, at the expense of junior hires.

For any office space built in the last decade, net-absorption (i.e. newly leased - vacated space) is dramatically positive. For anything older than that, the picture is relatively grim: more office space has been vacated than leased. In other words, office tenants are flocking to the best new assets, and leaving the older stuff behind. On the other hand, if you’re looking for a bargain on office space, and you like those pre-2015 vibes, well, you’re in luck.