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"Rethinking Ownership: The Cloud and Computing Technology"

Dec 4, 2023 - 11:55amSummary: The tension between ownership and renting, particularly in the context of technology and cloud computing, is a curious and complex topic that the speaker is exploring. They highlight the idea of effectively renting compute time and space through services like OpenAI and Microsoft Azure, and how reliance on the cloud has become a prevalent aspect of modern computing. The speaker also acknowledges the convenience of storing data in the cloud, even though they may own a computer. They mention OpenAI's work in this area, specifically their assistance API, and express a desire to further explore and challenge their own perspectives on these concepts.

Transcript: There is some level of core tension that I feel and I'm going to try to articulate it. It is basically the tension between, well, I guess, ownership and renting and maybe this is just something that we have come to accept. And maybe my perspective here is on the wrong side of history in some way. Something to explore. But I am very curious when I look at OpenAI and, say, Microsoft Azure, we are effectively renting compute time. And that's totally okay. But, and I guess same with the cloud, generally speaking, we are effectively renting space somewhere. And it is interesting to me that I guess we have come to take the cloud for granted in some way. And I think that even for myself. In the sense that I may own a computer, but most of the data on that computer, in fact, is not local to it. That's not to say that the computer doesn't compute things locally. It certainly does. But things are in the cloud for some level of convenience. So this is a fascinating little piece. And one of the things that I recognize in thinking about what I talked about earlier is that OpenAI has done a fair degree of work in this direction already. That is, they have their assistance API, which effectively, as far as I can tell, implements much of, you know, the brain piece in some way that I guess we all could be effectively chatting into one thread. I don't know how it works with audio files and the like, but they supposedly embed them all. So it could reach out to them. It's possible that this is worth playing around with. Yeah, I think something to think about. I was taking quite a strong position when I was speaking on local earlier. And I'm just basically questioning self in a way. Trying to sharpen positions. So I'm going to stop this and probably do another round of thinking on that in some way and just try to fight myself.

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