Scott Austin
@ScottMAustin
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Working on intersection of journalism and genAI. Building at https://t.co/ZFzA2ZdlW7 and leading Founder's Box accelerator. Ex-WSJ. Facts matter. Hook 'em!
San Francisco Bay Area
Joined February 2010
My wife & I both just had our time thoroughly wasted by the @toyota chat AI. First time in my life (that I know of) that I'm literally the victim of a bad AI agent implementation -- certainly not the last. I'm working on just such a system rn, so I have a good idea what failed
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Browser agents are actually NOT why they're doing this -- or why Perplexity has a browser now. Every one of these AI company browsers is about one thing & one thing only: web scraping. Cloudflare has shut down their ability to get tokens off the open web. Hence these browsers.
🚨 Brilliant move. OpenAI expected to release its own web browser. some reports says the the browser is slated to launch in the coming weeks If adopted by the 400 million weekly active users of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s browser could put pressure on Google's ad-revenue. Google
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the AI trade is alive and well...its just moved to the app layer & startups like @cursor_ai @AbridgeHQ @perplexity_ai are the new darlings Our latest TC Take: rise of the app layer (or as we like to say: Justice for AI wrappers) thanks to @ShivdevRao @kirbyman01 @c10n
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Warning canceled. Phew. Well at least I got a beautiful view up here!
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Sooooo … how seriously are people taking this tsunami warning in SF? Meeting cut short at the Ferry building with the alert. A group of cops shrugged their shoulders saying “you’ll probably be okay here.” Felt like the start of a bad movie. Moving to higher ground.
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After 5.5 years, today is my last day at Google. Leading @NotebookLM from idea to a product serving millions has been the ride of a lifetime. But the best part? Finding my future cofounders in the trenches: @jayspiel_ : My 4-year collaborator, design genius, and execution
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Most large AI models have trained on a giant set of Hollywood dialogue. Creators have not been compensated for it. Here’s a searchable database we built so you can see what’s in it.
theatlantic.com
Dialogue from these movies and TV shows has been used by companies such as Apple and Anthropic to train AI systems.
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The best WSJ homepage. Just last night I gave my daughter an extra "Free Evan" pin to put on her new backpack. So happy for @evangershkovich, and congratulations to all his @WSJ colleagues who for the past 16 months fought for his release and for press freedom. #istandwithevan
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“Bring him home.” A message from Evan Gershkovich’s colleagues.
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Inside Elon Musk's illegal drug use, and the years-long concern of some leaders at Tesla and SpaceX - especially, lately, about his use of ketamine. Some directors have taken drugs along with him. An investigation w/ the great @EmilyGlazer
wsj.com
Some executives and board members fear the billionaire’s use of drugs—including LSD, cocaine, ecstasy, mushrooms and ketamine—could harm his companies.
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Excited to share that my book is now available for pre-order! I have spent years reporting "The Everything War." It is the first untold exposé of Amazon’s endless strategic greed in pursuit of total domination. Available for pre-order here: https://t.co/ell70WAJJL… $AMZN
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News execs weigh deals with AI companies
axios.com
Publishers are concerned about what AI will do to their traffic and how their content has been used to train it.
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14% “tried it” is impressive this early … and with 5b+ people / 15b+ devices connected to the internet, real adoption should quickly accelerate via Metcalfe’s law if genAI usefully augments our lives
58% of US adults have heard of ChatGPT; 14% have tried it:
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