GM Readers! ☀️

Welcome to the 8th issue of Evolving Internet Insights — a weekly newsletter curating the top stories and our insights on the “Evolving Internet,” which covers everything from AI, Web3 and everything in between.

Thanks for reading!

Liang and Dan 🙌

🌰 In a Nutshell

• OpenAI launches their Enterprise product to meet the needs of corporations and companies

• Some schools are actively embracing AI for the upcoming school year

• According to an IBM Study, “time management skills and ability to prioritize” is now the most critical skill in the Age of AI ⌚

• We share our their thoughts on what the Evolving Internet means to them on a podcast

💾 Byte-sized Stories

This week’s top stories with our insights on top.

1. AI-Loving Employees Can Come Out of The Shadows With the Release of ChatGPT Enterprise 🥷

⚡️ TL;DR: OpenAI released ChatGPT Enterprise, a solution targeted towards corporations and companies. ChatGPT Enterprise alleviates the privacy and security concerns that big companies had around adopting and implementing ChatGPT in their organizations. In addition, the enterprise solution offers unlimited high speed access to GPT4, more powerful data analysis tools, and increased usage limits. According to OpenAI, ChatGPT is already being used by teams in over 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies, so ChatGPT Enterprise is the next logical step for OpenAI to catalyze a stronghold on the corporate segment. 🤯

⚡️ So What: Recently, IBM released a report where the headline was “AI won’t replace people—but people who use AI will replace people who don’t.” As more companies adopt enterprise grade AI solutions like ChatGPT Enterprise, employees will also need to upskill quickly to stay relevant and competitive at work. For example, future entry level roles might deprioritize one’s knowledge of Excel and instead focus on their ability to use Code Interpreter – ChatGPT’s data science/analyst in a box. Employees who have been using ChatGPT and other AI tools in the shadows will have an advantage because they can now formally “flex” their skills out in the open at work once their company adopts tools like ChatGPT Enterprise. Some are speculating that with widespread adoption, AI tools like ChatGPT will become the new “Microsoft Office” of knowledge work.

This positions OpenAI in a competitively in the AI race. And if that wasn’t enough, the Information reported that Open AI is close to reaching the $1B revenue mark – ahead of their $200M revenue forecast for 2023. 👀

Read More Here, Here, Here, Here

2. Some Schools Embrace AI and ChatGPT For The Upcoming School Season 🎒

⚡️ TL;DR: Some of the largest school districts in the US, like Los Angeles and New York, are unbanning ChatGPT and embracing the technology in the upcoming fall semester. When ChatGPT started to gain mainstream adoption, students were using it to do their homework and write their essays for assignments. Many schools thought this was a form of cheating. After some months, school administrators are realizing that “putting our heads behind the curtain or under the sheets and hoping [ChatGPT] goes away is simply not reality.”

⚡️ So What: Schools are realizing that while ChatGPT disrupts the delivery of traditional lesson plans and the completion of homework assignments, they cannot control how students access the technology outside of the classroom. And in our mind, nor should they. School districts are also concerned that if they ban ChatGPT in their district, their students are at risk of falling behind students in other districts that are adopting and more freely able to access the technology, particularly those students that come from affluent families.

A NYTimes article highlights how Walla Walla High School and its school district choose to embrace AI by hosting workshops to upskill teachers and brainstorm how ChatGPT can be used effectively and creatively in the classroom. More broadly, with any emerging technology, there are good ways to use it and bad ways to use it – but that is ultimately up to the existing systems and structures to decide. Oftentimes, the issue is that the existing structure tries to put innovation back in a bottle versus embracing it for a better outcome. 🎓

Read More Here, Here

3. US Federal Judge Rules In Favor Of Grayscale BTC ETF Application 🪙

⚡️ TL;DR: A US federal court ruled that the SEC acted unfairly in denying Grayscale’s request to turn its Bitcoin Trust product into an ETF. The court stated that “The Commission failed to adequately explain why it approved the listing of two bitcoin futures ETPs [exchange traded products] but not Grayscale’s proposed bitcoin ETP.” The court further added that, “ in the absence of a coherent explanation, this unlike regulatory treatment of like products is unlawful.” The court’s ruling basically mandates that the SEC take another look at Grayscale application. Although this is a favorable ruling, it does not guarantee that Grayscale will get immediate approval for its Bitcoin ETF from the SEC.

⚡️ So What: Many saw this as a big win for the Web3 industry especially since the SEC has an upcoming deadline to consider five other BTC ETF applications from traditional financial giants like Blackrock and Fidelity. More broadly, certainty around regulation is critical for an emerging tech industry like Web3 to gain adoption. If there is a path for BTC ETFs to clear the SEC, some of the largest asset managers like Blackrock would bring a step change in liquidity and further legitimize the industry.

Read More Here, Here, Here

📊 Let’s Get Graphic

One visual we couldn’t stop thinking about.

IBM Study: Most Critical Skills Required Of The Workforce ⌚️🧪

⚡️ Takeaway: According to the IBM study, the most important skill in the workforce is “time management skills and ability to prioritize.” And the least important skill is now “proficiency in STEM” which was previously the most important skill when the study was done in 2016. Time management and prioritization will become increasingly important because in the Age of AI, when everything is accessible, prioritizing the “what and why” will be someone's competitive edge in the workforce. As for proficiency in STEM, we still think it’s a critical skill to have in order to check or validate the quality of an output produced by AI. Said another way, AI can write code for you, but how do you know the code is correct if you don’t understand how to write code? 🧐

🧠 Brain Food

One focus topic to feed your brain.

In the next 🧠 Brain Food newsletter hitting your inbox on Tuesday, you will read our thesis on the Evolving Internet ⚡️. We will break down this concept and share our ideas on where this movement is headed.

Subscribe to get it straight to your inbox on Tuesday, you’ll want to read this one 👀

🐇 Down the Rabbit Hole

Some deeper dives to help you get smarter on emerging tech.

1. Creator Economy 2.0: Essay by Andrew Chen of a16z, highlighting the dynamics of creator economy startups, from power laws to their business models.

2. The Metaverse and Digital Ownership: Ted Talk by Yat Siu, CEO of Animoca Brands, a Web3 gaming giant, outlines the importance of digital ownership on the internet and in the metaverse.

3. IBM Augmented Work in AI-driven World Study: IBM’s study that highlights how AI will change the future of work.

🌊 Watercooler Talk

Overheard from our community.

Earlier this week, we were guests on the Money Never Sleeps Podcast hosted by Pete Townsend, who is a managing director of the Web3 Techstars Accelerator. We highly recommend not just a listen to our conversation with Pete, but also the other great episodes on his podcast.

For much of our conversation with Pete, we unpacked our ideas behind the “Evolving Internet” concept. Without spoiling your listening of the podcast 😉, here is a summary of what we said:

• When we think about the Evolving Internet, we think about how the Internet has become the “town hall” for innovation and users globally – a place where with each passing day more of the world’s net new value is created and consumed.

• While the Internet has been changing ever since its inception, the Internet of today is going through an accelerated pace of change marked by multiple fundamental shifts across different key user segments that make up the Internet.

What are those fundamental shifts you ask? Well, you will find out more in Tuesday’s 🧠 Brain Food newsletter.

P.S. Got some watercooler talk for us? Share your suggestions in our comments section!

📝 Elite Jobs Corner

From our networks, we curate and connect top founders and companies to rockstar recruits.

⚡️[Web3] Founding Engineer at Karma3 Labs

• What: Karma3 Labs is building the reputation layer for the Internet. As more of our lives continue to move online, knowing who can be trusted and who cannot will be critical.

• Who: Founding team has experience launching and scaling Web2 and crypto startups with successful exits. Deep technical and research talent. One of the Cofounders wrote the algorithm that powers how Google ranks pages. 🤯

⚡️[AI] Founding Lead Infrastructure Engineer at Konko.ai 

• What: Konko AI is a fully managed API that allows developers to easily access, evaluate, choose, fine-tune and deploy large language models (LLMs)

• Who: Founding team with operator and technical experience in AI, venture backed startups, consulting, both HBS grads 🤓

⚡️[Operating Role] Strategist, Operator and 3x Founder looking for strategic projects / consulting work. Meet Tricia Jose

• Who: Mission-driven concept-to-execution strategist and operator for impactful products and solutions with 10+ years of experience. 3x founder in fintech/web3 x Future of Work. Started her first company during her MASc in Biomedical Engineering, and her most recent company generated $9M in enterprise value for Canada’s largest bank.

• Secret sauce: Tricia’s multidisciplinary background across startups, corporate, biomedical engineering, product/ops, community and the arts has allowed her to adapt and solve important problems from unique angles.

• Fun fact: Outside of work, Tricia co-wrote and directed an original musical composed entirely of volunteers that was shown 8 times across 4 cities and raised $300k for local and international charities. During the pandemic she wrote and published 3 children’s books that made it to the top of Amazon’s recommended list within weeks of publishing. 📚

📣 Call to Action

Are you a potential candidate? You can apply directly and reply to this newsletter with an email asking for us to refer you (please include why we should refer you). What are you waiting for? Take a chance. 🎲

Are you hiring? If there is a rockstar recruit that you want to get connected to and/or you want us to showcase the role(s) you are hiring for, please reply directly to this newsletter. We would love to hear from you! 👂

Do you know someone who is a great fit for a role? Reply to this newsletter providing us more details in your email (also, since you are already in your inbox, forward them this newsletter and ask them to subscribe). 🙏

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DISCLAIMER: This post is provided strictly for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing written in this post should be taken as financial advice or advice of any kind. The content of this post are the opinions of the authors and not representative of other parties. Empower yourself, DYOR (do your own research).