😎 Happy Friday from Montauk
🎞 I finally got to see Oppenheimer in IMAX 70mm film on Monday and came away, if not very moved, still really impressed. As soon as I got out I wanted to see it again which I can’t say for most 3 hour movies. Hopefully will see Barbie next week.
Good reading,
-Teddy
🤖👾 Generative AI is changing “not just how we create games, but the nature of the games themselves” (Andreessen Horowitz | Jonathan Lai | Jul 2023)
The net-result from a player perspective: more immersive gameplay. Much of the joy of playing The Sims or colony sim RimWorld comes from unexpected things happening and weathering the emotional highs and lows. With agent behavior powered by the corpus of the social web, we might see sim games that reflect not just the game designer’s imagination but also the unpredictability of human society. Watching these sim games could serve as a next-generation Truman Show, endlessly entertaining in a way not possible today with pre-scripted TV or movies… there is huge demand today for generative agents. 61% of game studios in our recent survey plan to experiment with AI NPCs.
On the cost challenge of running these sims…
The cost of running scaled simulations in the cloud for a 24/7 live service game may not be financially feasible – operating 25 agents over 2 days cost the research team thousands of dollars in compute. Efforts to move model workload on-device are promising but still relatively early. We’ll likely also need to figure out new norms around parasocial relationships with agents.
On AI-powered narrative and worldbuilding…
Today, many companies are applying LLMs to the D&D storytelling model. The opportunity lies in enabling players to spend as much time as they want in player-crafted or IP universes they love, guided by an infinitely patient AI storyteller…
In the long-run, the holy grail is to use AI models for real-time world building. We see a potential future where entire games are no longer rendered, but generated at run-time using neural networks. NVIDIA’s DLSS technology can already generate new higher-resolution game frames on the fly using consumer-grade GPUs. One day, you may be able to click “interact” on a Netflix movie, then step into the world with every scene generated on the fly and uniquely personalized for the player. In this future, games will become indistinguishable from film.
🍺🤕 Consumers are becoming more concerned about the health effects of alcohol and some companies are developing a synthetic alcohol without hangovers. Thanks to Arthur and Rahul for sending this one. (WSJ | Julie Wernau | Jul 2023)
[GABA Labs] is developing a synthetic alcohol that it says will bring pleasurable effects without hangovers, health problems or slurred speech. Its basis is gamma-aminobutyric acid, an amino acid that targets receptors in the front of the brain that trigger the relaxation and sociability alcohol brings, while avoiding the chaos it wreaks on the body… Creating a substance that targets only the GABA receptors allows the brain to then turn on dopamine and serotonin naturally as the pleasures of the evening take off, he says. “It feels like what a glass of wine feels like. It feels relaxing. It makes you a bit more chatty, a bit more socially engaged with people,” he says of the product GABA Labs is developing, dubbed Alcarelle.
Some of you already know this, but this is something I’ve been working on lately.
Some consumers, concerned about health effects, have moved to consume less alcohol in recent years. The isolation of the pandemic contributed to a spike in drinking in 2020, research has shown, but alcohol consumption has since retreated, particularly among younger people. Sales of no- and low-alcohol beverages rose in 2022, according to industry tracker IWSR.
💻📱 A very brief profile on Morris Chang, founder of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). (NYT | Paul Mozur, John Liu | Aug 2024)
If you want the full story on Chang, highly recommend listening to this Acquired podcast episode on the founding of TSMC.
Mr. Chang was born in 1931 in a China on the brink of war. Before the age of 18, he lived in six cities, changed schools 10 times, experienced bombings in Guangzhou and Chongqing, and crossed the front lines as his family fled Japanese-occupied Shanghai during World War II…
More than a dozen people familiar with Mr. Chang, many of whom knew him as a colleague at TSMC, said he built the company — and outmaneuvered giants like Samsung and Intel — by being meticulous, stubborn, trusting his best people and, crucially, having boundless ambition and making daring moves when justified. When TSMC stumbled after the 2008 financial crisis, he returned as chief executive at age 77 to take over again…
On making the deal with Apple to supply chips for the iPhone:
Mr. Chang would not make the same mistake. Apple demanded better terms and lower prices than others, but he understood the contract’s scale would help TSMC rocket past competitors. That was a lesson he learned from Bill Bain, who founded the consulting firm Bain & Company, back at Texas Instruments…
Mr. Bain, then a consultant for Boston Consulting Group, had worked in an office next to Mr. Chang for almost two years. He had analyzed Texas Instruments’ production and sales numbers and argued that the more the company produced, the better it would perform.
VC Josh Wolfe recently brought up Chang in his testimony before the House Select Committee on China to argue that the US should be creating opportunities here for highly skilled workers while restricting investment and capital for CCP companies that pose a risk to US interests.