Tuesday, January 14, 2025

AI in 2025


The "arms race" for who will build the best AI is still dominating the news in the new years 2025. 

An interesting article I read discussed, among other things, the new Google Gemini:

A nice example of that is Google's Gemini with Deep Research (accessible to everyone who subscribes to Gemini), which is really a specialized research agent. I gave it a topic like "research a comparison of ways of funding startup companies, from the perspective of founders, for high growth ventures." And the agentic system came up with a plan, read through 173(!) websites and compiled a report for me with the answer a few minutes later.

The result was a 17 page paper with 118 references! But is it any good? I have taught the introductory entrepreneurship class at Wharton for over a decade, published on the topic, started companies myself, and even wrote a book on entrepreneurship, and I think this is pretty solid. I didn't spot any obvious errors, but you can read it yourself if you would like here. The biggest issue is not accuracy, but that the agent is limited to public non-paywalled websites, and not scholarly or premium publications. It also is a bit shallow and does not make strong arguments in the face of conflicting evidence. So not as good as the best humans, but better than a lot of reports that I see.

Still, this is a genuinely disruptive example of an agent with real value. Researching and report writing is a major task of many jobs.


If you work with your head more then with your hands I guess your job is in some danger in the next 3-7 years. 

Read the whole article here: Prophecies of the Flood

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