Luck Is the Residue of Design

Gordon Moore died on Friday, and while you may not recognize his name, you’ve likely heard of Moore’s Law, and certainly you’ve used 英特尔 products, the semiconductor chip maker he founded that helped coin the Silicon Valley name.?

In 1965, Moore published an article in Electronics, a trade magazine, entitled “Cramming More Components Onto Integrated Circuits,” that purported to predict the future. He said the number of transistors that could fit on a silicon chip would double at predictably regular intervals (every 18 months), thus revealing the exponential data-processing power of computers.

“What I could see was that semiconductor devices were the way electronics were going to become cheap. That was the message I was trying to get across,” he said in 2000. “It turned out to be an amazingly precise prediction — a lot more precise than I ever imagined it would be.”

When Moore began, a single silicon transistor sold for $150, and not long later, $10 would buy more than 100 million transistors. He once wrote that if cars advanced as quickly as computers, “they would get 100,000 miles to the gallon and it would be cheaper to buy a Rolls-Royce than park it. (Cars would also be a half an inch long.)”

Gordon Earl Moore completed an undergraduate degree at the 美国加州大学伯克利分校 and a PhD from Caltech , both in chemistry. Ten years later, with $2.5 million in capital (the equivalent of about $22 million today), Moore and Robert Noyce launched Integrated Electronics Corporation, later shortened to Intel. The third employee was Andy Grove, a young Hungarian immigrant who had previously worked under Moore.

The business plan, “It said we were going to work with silicon,” Moore recalled, “and make interesting products…Fortunately, very much by luck, we had hit on a technology that had just the right degree of difficulty for a successful start-up…This was how Intel began.”

Mr. Moore partly blamed his own shortsightedness for Intel’s missed opportunity to manufacture a PC. “Long before 苹果 , one of our engineers came to me with the suggestion that Intel ought to build a computer for the home, and I asked him, ‘What the heck would anyone want a computer for in his home?’”?

“If you'd asked me in 1980 what the big impact of microprocessors would be, I probably would have missed the PC. If you asked me in 1990 what was important, I probably would have missed the Internet.”

During his lifetime Moore contemplated the inevitable end of Moore’s Law, stating “It can’t continue forever. The nature of exponentials is that you push them out and eventually disaster happens. No physical quantity can continue to change exponentially forever. Your job is delaying forever.”

Perhaps, our world is moving away from the limits of physical quantities. What are the new limits and the new laws that will govern the next generation of technological innovation??

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.

- John Quincy Adams

The King Is Dead. Long Live the King.

In 1995 Microsoft founder, Bill Gates said, "Moore's Law is the reason that computers today are millions of times more powerful than the room-sized models of the 1950s."

Last week, Gates published his latest treatise, entitled “The Age of AI Has Begun” on his Gates Notes website. He begins:?

In my lifetime, I’ve seen two demonstrations of technology that struck me as revolutionary. The first time was in 1980, when I was introduced to a graphical user interface—the forerunner of every modern operating system, including Windows.?

The second big surprise came in mid-2022, when I challenged OpenAI to train an artificial intelligence (AI) to pass an Advanced Placement biology exam. I thought the challenge would keep them busy for two or three years.?

In September, when I met with them again, I watched in awe as they asked GPT, their AI model, 60 multiple-choice questions from the AP Bio exam. We had an outside expert score the test, and GPT got a 5—the highest possible score, and the equivalent to getting an A or A+ in a college-level biology course.

I knew I had just seen the most important advance in technology since the graphical user interface. The development of AI is as fundamental as the creation of the microprocessor, the personal computer, the Internet, and the mobile phone.?

Gates goes on to explain that AI will change the way people work, learn, travel, get health care, and communicate with each other. Entire industries will reorient around it, and businesses will distinguish themselves by how well they use it.

AI will also enable the creation of trained agents that function as digital personal assistants. There will also be agents that understand all of your company’s policies and history and can be available for employees to consult with directly and can participate in all internal meetings.?

Gates claims AI-driven software will finally deliver on the internet’s unrequited promise of revolutionizing the way people teach and learn. By tailoring content to different learning styles, AI can engage with each student uniquely. It will measure a student’s understanding, notice when they’re losing interest, and understand what kind of motivation they’d respond to.?

He warns of risks, problems, and limitations with AI. For example, AIs may not necessarily be good at understanding the context for a human's request, which leads to some strange results. There are other issues, such as AIs giving wrong answers to math problems because they struggle with abstract reasoning.?

He suggests however, that none of these are fundamental limitations of artificial intelligence. In fact, he says developers would have them largely fixed in less than two years and possibly much faster. Gates worries more about the human limitations vs. those that are machine-based.

He concludes by saying, “No matter what, the subject of AIs will dominate the public discussion for the foreseeable future.”?

Gates suggests three principles that should guide the AI conversation.

1. Balance fears about the downsides of AI with its ability to improve people’s lives. To make the most of this remarkable new technology, we’ll need to both guard against the risks and spread the benefits to as many people as possible.

2. Market forces won’t naturally produce AI products and services that help the poorest. The opposite is more likely. Governments and philanthropy must ensure that AIs are used to reduce inequity.?

3. We should keep in mind that we’re only at the beginning of what AI can accomplish. Whatever limitations it has today will be gone before we know it.