What we’re reading (5/8)
“ChatGPT Fever Has Investors Pouring Billions Into AI Startups, No Business Plan Required” (Wall Street Journal). “While most of Silicon Valley’s venture-capital ecosystem remains in the doldrums, investors this year have been pouring funds into companies like Essential specializing in generative AI systems that can create humanlike conversation, imagery and computer code. Many of the companies getting backing are new and unproven.”
“Liz Holmes Wants You To Forget About Elizabeth” (New York Times). “Ms. Holmes has not spoken to the media since 2016, when her legal team advised she go quiet. And, as the adage goes, if you don’t feed the press, we feed on you. In Elizabeth Holmes, we found an all-you-can-eat buffet. It had everything: The black turtlenecks, the Kabuki red lipstick, the green juices, the dancing to Lil Wayne. Somewhere along the way, Ms. Holmes says that the person (whoever that is) got lost. At one point, I tell her that I heard Jennifer Lawrence had pulled out of portraying her in a movie. She replied, almost reflectively, ‘They’re not playing me. They’re playing a character I created.’”
“RIP Metaverse (Insider). “The Metaverse, the once-buzzy technology that promised to allow users to hang out awkwardly in a disorientating video-game-like world, has died after being abandoned by the business world. It was three years old.”
“Fed Survey: Banks Are Tightening Up Their Lending Standards After Rate Hikes, Turmoil” (CNN Business). “More lenders have stiffened their standards in the wake of increasing turmoil within the banking sector, according to the Federal Reserve’s quarterly Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey (SLOOS) released Monday.”
“Why Journalists Have More Freedom Than Professors” (Ross Douthat, New York Times). “[Matt] Yglesias absorbed a set of personal and professional costs by being somewhat unwoke, but he then found compensations elsewhere in the media ecosystem, while also retaining his connection to the world of practical liberal politics — precisely because politicians have to be practical to win. Crucially, he did not cease to be a journalist in this process; he merely changed his journalistic identity, and his position within the profession changed but didn’t fall apart.”
