Improving model capability with more and more data is what model developers do, over months. Structure and prompting improvements can be done by the end user, today.
In fact I think this is a ripe space for opportunities to build new institutions that provide value.
The value of college is not only education, but also community.
We are seeing, and will continue to see, many new online and IRL ventures that provide community and learning to young people, which will serve them much better than colleges.
> I think college is broken. But my question is whether it’s broken and useful or broken and harmful.
A better question IMO is: Is college more useful than the alternatives?
College is a huge investment: tens of thousands of dollars, plus 4 years of full-time work.
When I went to college in 2007 (not in US, but I digress…) it made sense to go in for a 4-year degree because there were no alternatives. Coursera, Udemy, etc. did not exist. YouTube was just born. And to start with, we didn’t even have broadband in my house or school, that could stream video.
It’s a very different world today. The opportunity cost is too great. Even without being a Thiel fellow, there are many alternatives to what you can do with 4 years of your life that will set you up for success – not only educational opportunities but also starting a business, freelancing, etc.
Exciting! A few years ago, as an academic design researcher, I pondered the same question and wrote a few research papers.
Like the author, my inspiration for doing this work had come from a vintage watch I received from my dad!
Turns out, there’s a rich literature in design and psychology research on the heirloom status of objects. And more generally, on why and how people imbue things with value.
We even went as far as to apply for (and receive) a grant for UX design research, exploring how to create for heirloom value in the digital world. I’ve moved on from academia since then, but AFAIK our PhD is working on it at KTH in Stockholm: https://www.baytas.net/work/digital-preciousness
> “In the exercise, someone picks a number of adjectives from a list, choosing ones they feel describe their own personality. The subject's peers then get the same list, and each picks an equal number of adjectives that describe the subject. These adjectives are then inserted into a two-by-two grid of four cells.”
> “Room one is the part of ourselves that we and others see. Room two contains aspects that others see but we are unaware of. Room three is the private space we know but hide from others. Room four is the unconscious part of us that neither ourselves nor others see.”
I wonder how the fourth room, which neither the subject or their peers see, is populated…
As an experienced web designer I can tell you the design and implementation are straightforward, but very competently done. There are many things like the typography and UX writing that suggest this is the work of a fellow experienced designer. There’s much more here than what can be captured in a “guide” - it’s just an overall high level of design competence.
I have a theory that when the C-suite decides to slay an entire division they assign an incompetent boss. Give them a few months to mess it up. Then go for the kill. The incompetent new boss magically absorbs all the blame.
> “Ph.D.s are looking at the labor market, seeing opportunities out there, and taking them,” she says. “Those skills that we teach our Ph.D. students are in demand.”
LoL.
Among all the stereotypes in academia perhaps the truest one is profs taking credit for what their students achieve.
There is a branch of computer science, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), where exactly the ideas in this article have been playing out for a few decades already.
Interestingly the responses I got from people in the HCI field was the inverse of the sentiment in this article. Here it seems that the author is arguing to increase social sciences in CS, and getting pushback. One of my arguments was to increase tech/eng competences in HCI, and I got pushback on that too.
One thing that strikes me from this article is a vast bureaucracy, regulation, credentialing structures, accounting, etc. that the story revolves around.
In Sweden, where I live, there are plenty of educational opportunities available to people completely free of charge. Entirely subsidized by the government. Instead of assembling elaborate bureaucratic structures, the state spends its money paying school admin and teachers.
While these are not universities per se, the opportunities they open up to students are top notch. You don't need an entire college education to "set graduates on a path towards breaking the cycle of poverty", which according to the article is what work colleges aspire to achieve.
This vocational education is also much more economically efficient than universities in the same country, mainly due to losing the weight of bureaucracy and credentialing structures. Teachers are well-paid, ops run smoothly with few personnel, and students get access to many new job opportunities completely free of charge.
Today: crypto is a much superior way of sending money across international borders – cheaper, faster, more “user-friendly” (not for everyone, but definitely for my user persona).
More generally, crypto can do most things that a bank can do. It’s not the best at many of those things yet. But it’s evolving much faster than banks do.
Here’s Yanis Varoufakis on disintermediation from banks:
“ Today, you use digital money (phone apps or plastic cards) to buy a cup of coffee at your local Starbucks. But, to do so, you first need an account with a commercial bank. In other words, to grant you access to digital fiat money, the state forces you to fall into the embrace of the commercial banks.
So, today, the state guarantees a monopoly over payments to commercial banks. And that is only one gift to the oligarchy. A second, even greater gift, is that only commercial banks are allowed to have an account with the central bank.” [https://the-crypto-syllabus.com/yanis-varoufakis-on-techno-f...]
(He’s very critical of crypto in the rest of the interview - great read.)
Even more generally, with smart contracts, the blockchain becomes a platform not only for finance and trade, but also law. Every country has laws written in their own language. Smart contracts are our laws, written in code. So, anything done by authorities which involves record-keeping is a candidate for disruption by the blockchain.
The trouble is that many of the best use cases for crypto (land deeds, electric car charging, scientific publishing and citations) are public goods – beneficial for the society as a whole, but not profitable for any individual to build. Once we get over baseball cards and apes, it will be exciting to see public goods flourish on the blockchain.
Virgil was not only a creative genius and maestro of culture, but a true philosopher of design.
I was never into his whole aesthetic, and never owned any of his pieces, yet he was one of my favorite designers in the world. One of the most sophisticated and savvy designers to walk the earth.
I’d 100% recommend going through the lectures and interviews he has given, for all kinds of creatives. He gives a masterclass on how to cut through the superficial with creative and intellectual integrity.
fascinating checkout flow