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AI is Levelling the Playing Field

AI is Levelling the Playing Field

From Elite Developers to Rural Farmers

Alex Banks
January 18, 2023

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Hey friends 👋 ,

Happy Wednesday and welcome to Through the Noise!

I woke up this morning with hope, but apparently Mother Nature had other plans. Just as I thought the Great British weather was finally taking a break from its usual wintery gloom, I was met with a crisp -5°C (23°F) and a side of bitter wind. My 6am morning walk to the gym quickly turned into a sprint– you don't want to be hanging around in a pair of shorts for too long at that temperature unless you're auditioning for the next Frozen sequel.

Enough of my weather rant, let's get into today's piece. This one involves the CEO of Microsoft: Satya Nadella, an ex. Tesla engineer and a rural Indian farmer. Let's dive in.

Read time: 2 minutes

A Positive Future

DALL·E prompt: "a black and white sketch of balancing the scales"

It was New Year's Day and Satya Nadella was scrolling through his Twitter newsfeed, reading about the latest advancements in AI. One tweet caught his eye. It was from Andrej Karpathy, the former Director of AI at Tesla.

Nice read on reverse engineering of GitHub Copilot 🪄. Copilot has dramatically accelerated my coding, it's hard to imagine going back to "manual coding". Still learning to use it but it already writes ~80% of my code, ~80% accuracy. I don't even really code, I prompt. & edit.
— Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy)
Dec 30, 2022

Karpathy claimed that 80% of the code he writes is now done using GitHub Copilot. Copilot is an AI-powered code completion tool that helps developers write code faster and more accurately. Nadella couldn't help but ponder the implications of such a statement. If one of the most elite AI developers in the world is now being far more productive using this tool, what does that mean for the future of AI?

The next day, Nadella found himself in India, watching a demo of a rural Indian farmer interacting with a chatbot. The chatbot was trained on Indian government documents and was accessible in every Indian language, on demand. The technology made it easier for Indian farmers to access government programs and services, which were previously difficult to navigate due to technology constraints and language barriers.

Nadella was struck by the contrast between the elite AI developer he had read about the day before, and this rural Indian farmer. Both were using the same technology, and both were reaping the benefits of increased productivity.

This demo was a powerful illustration of the potential of AI to democratize knowledge work. As GPT-3 and GPT-3.5 (ChatGPT) continue to evolve, more and more people will be able to participate in knowledge work, regardless of their background or location. Frontline workers from all sectors will be able to use these tools to create applications and workflows, leading to better wages and a more productive labour force.

Nadella left India that day with a sense of hope and inspiration. He couldn't wait to see what the future held for AI and its ability to positively impact the lives of everyone around the world.

Okay, I'll come clean. I used ChatGPT to turn my notes into a Hemingway bestseller.

But if there's one key takeaway from this great interview with the WSJ it's this: AI is democratizing knowledge work and increasing productivity for everyone. Whether you're an elite developer or a rural farmer, we can all benefit from being augmented by this technology.

Let me know what you think

A Little Something Extra

📚 Effortless Public Speaking: My friend Liam Sandford recently launched his new book. I find most public speaking advice to be unhelpful, but this one cuts through the noise and is your route to stress-free public speaking.