The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 12 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
VanDevender: Most products marketed as AI are rebranded actuarial science
“Most of the things that call themselves AI out there are really just a rebranding.”
VanDevender: Defensive data moats are oversold and mostly noise
“Most of the data sets out there or the defensibility data sets out there I think are oversold. There is this very, it's a very compelling, very tantalizing notion that, oh, I just have so much data, and nobody else has it, and therefore it must be special, but…”
VanDevender: Smaller datasets force self-driving car companies to build better algorithms
“Even if you have a much, much smaller data set than Google, you can still do a really good job of developing a self-driving car, and in fact, it almost forces you into a better position, because if you have complete knowledge of the entire street grid, you can…”
VanDevender: Autonomous trucks will improve delivery but erode rural wealth distribution
“So if you replace the trucks with self-driving trucks, you end up with a much better goods distribution system, which is positive, but the trucking system is a much worse wealth distribution system.”
VanDevender: Digital platforms increase the economic value of physical proximity
“The lesson has been that actually those digital technologies have actually made proximity more valuable. If you think about like where, where a lot of that value to people has come from, it's from companies like Lyft, like Postmates, a Craigslist, Amazon Prime…”
VanDevender: Deep learning is just linear algebra at industrial scale
“At the core of it is just this matrix multiplication operations. It's, you know, you're just sort of doing linear algebra at industrial scale. We haven't gotten to the point for most of these things or most of the things that call themselves AI, where you're r…”
VanDevender: Most 'big data' datasets are only megabytes or gigabytes
“Most of the things that are sort of big data are actually not that big. You know, you would like to, you'd like to think of these petabytes and exabytes floating around there and coming up with really amazing insights that could never have been seen. But a lot…”
VanDevender: US trucking operates as both goods and wealth distribution
“The whole trucking system does serves two purposes at the same time. One, it's a goods distribution system. So we load things on the trucks, we ship them around. That's how we get all the stuff that we buy at the store, but it's also a wealth distribution syst…”
VanDevender: VR will repeat the mistaken belief that physical location doesn't matter
“I think we're sort of poised to make that same mistake again with virtual reality.”
VanDevender: Drilling into specific technical details tests a founder's true depth
“Even if you don't necessarily yourself have the complete picture by just, you know, drilling down on specific aspects, you know, whether that person has, like, has all the answers and can go as deep as you want to go is a really good sign.”
VanDevender: Robot maintenance jobs will pay more but employ fewer people
“There will be those, some of those jobs created and they will be better jobs than trucker jobs. Those people will be more productive. They'll get paid more. They won't be on the road all the time. They'll be home for dinner with their kids. So it'll be a bette…”
VanDevender: Atomic electron microscopes require quantum computing techniques
“So we built single atom resolution electron microscopes, which turns out to be very similar to building quantum computers. And that you're manipulating the quantum states of individual atoms, but use that for biotechnology purposes.”