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As I’m sure you’re aware, the talent wars and funding wars going on in the world of artificial intelligence has reached a fever pitch. Nine-figure pay packages and ten-figure funding rounds for “startups” have become the norm.
Much of this is covered in a specialty publication called The Information, and a story yesterday caught my eye:
I’m a writer. I have written professionally since I was fifteen years old. Given my peculiar interest in comedians, I find it interesting that the men in that field often start off very young as well, such as Gilbert Gottfried and the surprisingly talented Bobcat Goldthwait.
I started writing for national magazines when I was a kid, and I wrote my first published book at sixteen, to be followed by a couple dozen more.
In Robert Altman’s movie Short Cuts, which is packed with great quotes, there’s one particular bit of dialog I’m thinking about lately.
I was thumbing through /wsb and noticed a post entitled “I’m the biggest idiot on Earth“. Since I figured someone must be cutting in on my turf with a line like that, I checked out the post.
When I got my TRS-80 computer in 1980, one of the very first programs I bought for it was Eliza, which was an exceptionally simple implementation of what seemed to be an electronic psychologist. I found it fascinating, and it was extra cool that Eliza was born the same year I was.
