Rami's Readings #38
The latest on TechAide, Apéro & Intellect, LLMs, Ernie 4.0, UAE, Seattle Upzoning, Real Estate, College Sports, FTX Trails, and more.
Welcome to Rami’s Readings #38 - a weekly digest of interesting articles, videos, Twitter threads from my various sources across the Internet. Expect a list of reads covering technology, business, culture, fashion, travel and more. Learn about what I do at ramisayar.com/about.
👋🏼 Welcome New Subscribers
Hello and a warm welcome to our community!
First off, a hearty thank you for subscribing to Rami's Readings! I am thrilled to have you on board. Every edition of this newsletter is a labor of love, tailored to provide you with enlightening reads, thought-provoking insights, and a fresh perspective on various topics.
📈 Top 3 Newsletters According to Substack:
Remember, reading isn't just about absorbing information—it's about growing, understanding, and expanding perspectives. Welcome and happy reading! 📚✨
🙏🏻 Thank you TechAide
Deep gratitude to the TechAide team for orchestrating an outstanding conference! Together, we raised an impressive $46,000 for Centraide. I was honored to share insights on product lessons, particularly Search and LLMs, with the vibrant Montréal Product Management community.
To my fellow speakers who traveled from various corners to join us in my beloved hometown - thank you! The depth and quality of our discussions were truly enriching. Montréal, your spirit of innovation and collaboration always shines through. Keep up the incredible work!
Apéro & Intellect Recap!
Apéro & Intellect is a curated series of intimate gatherings discussing Artificial Intelligence designed to stimulate both your mind and your palate. 🎟 For Subscribers Only. I hosted three Apéro & Intellect events in New York City, Montreal, and Boston last week.
In all three events: how to apply LLMs to specific business scenarios dominated the conversation. Three tips that resonated most with attendees:
Identify the value brought to the business upfront before jumping into LLM implementation.
DAIR.AI’s prompt engineering guide on GitHub (previously shared in #1) continues to be a popular introductory guide.
Keeping up to date with all the latest news feels like an impossible task. I shared that I also struggle with the pace of news. Here is a paper to help you read papers better. 🤣 🤦
🤖 AI Reads
Chinese Search Engine Company Baidu Unveils Ernie 4.0 AI Model, Claims That It Rivals GPT-4
Notes: Has anyone read a paper evaluating Ernie 4.0?
ChatGPT Creator Partners With Abu Dhabi’s G42 in Middle East AI Push
Notes: More from the UAE.
An Industry Insider Drives an Open Alternative to Big Tech’s A.I.
Notes: Interesting read about the Allen Institute (local to me in Seattle).
AutoMix: Automatically Mixing Language Models
Notes: A technique to reduce inference costs and improve quality.
AutoMix, an approach that strategically routes queries to larger LMs, based on the approximate correctness of outputs from a smaller LM. Central to AutoMix is a few-shot self-verification mechanism, which estimates the reliability of its own outputs without requiring training.
Llemma: An Open Language Model For Mathematics
Notes: New LLM for mathematics.
💼 Business Reads
Upzoning with Strings Attached: Evidence from Seattle's Affordable Housing Mandate
Notes: Disappointing.
Our quasi-experimental border design finds strong evidence of developers strategically siting projects away from MHA-zoned plots – despite their upzoning – and instead to nearby blocks and parcels not subject to the program’s affordability requirements.
Sports Are Part of the College Curriculum, Too
Notes: Another interesting opinion piece from Tyler Cowen about sports and young adult development. Interesting long-term positive impacts uncovered in the underlying research paper.
Changes to the Delta SkyMiles Program
Notes: I covered the changes in #33. Delta walked back some of the changes (kind of).
You have to read
’s coverage of the FTX trials. A new favorite:
That is all for this week. Signing off from Cambridge, MA.