No Coding Before 10am; VCs Are Investing in Competing Companies – DGAF About Conflicts; “Technology is Not Destiny” – Principles for AI’s Future; and +++ [link blog]

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President’s Weekend link blog.

Founding Furrthers

VCs Break Taboo by Backing Both Anthropic, OpenAI in AI Battle [Rebecca Torrence and Natasha Mascarenhas/Bloomberg] – VC conflicts. More and more like hedge funds holding stocks in competitors. Less like OG VC.

For the longest time it was “no conflicts.”

Then became “well, this is our core fund and that other investment is in our growth fund.”

Then it evolved to, “it’s ok because two different GPs [within the fund] are making the investment”

Now it’s just straight up YOLO.

AI, Democracy, and the Responsibility of Leadership [Bijan Sabet] – Bijan is a former VC [Spark cofounder] who then served as our Ambassador to the Czech Republic during the Biden administration. He continues to do good work on educational boards, Human Rights Watch, and others. I always appreciate his writing, and here he calls on our industry to be mindful.

“Technology is not destiny. It is a tool. Its impact depends on who builds it, who benefits from it, and the values that guide its use.” Followed by five principles in AI development.

the dream is materializing [Jackie Luo/the dream machine] – Jackie writes about her own experiences with AI and LLMs, moving from her professional realizations to training her own model based. I don’t want to excerpt it because it’s beautiful and interesting as a whole piece. Read it.

No Coding Before 10am [Michael Bloch/In The Trenches] – Entrepreneur turned investor, Michael here covers how he’s seen one portfolio company transform its engineering practices around AI-aided development.

“Their playbook is not “use AI to code faster.” It’s a full inversion. Agents, not engineers, now do the work. Engineers make sure the agents can do the work well.”

The post’s title comes from this rule: No coding before 10am. Hands off keyboards. First hour or two every morning is for talking, aligning, and drafting prompts together. Once the team is aligned on what to build and how to set agents up, then you can code and let agents start working.

Craigslist Founder Signs Giving Pledge and Narrows Focus [Ben Gose/Chronicle of Philanthropy] – Craig Newmark is a wonderful mensch when it comes to philanthropy. Seems like a good dude who just wants a better world. Here he reconciles some of the limits of how philanthropy can/can’t help journalism.

“Craig Newmark made his fortune by starting Craigslist, the online classified site where people can buy or sell just about anything. But when it comes to his philanthropy, Newmark is taking a more focused approach. After some hard-earned lessons from gifts that didn’t pan out, Newmark is concentrating on his top two priorities – cybersecurity and helping military families and veterans.”

Enjoy your weekends!

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