Hey there 👋 ,

At the risk of featuring too many metaverse-y articles (on a four-week streak now), I’ve given my take on a Waabi’s approach to getting driverless cars to us faster. Also, a couple of great threads on non-custodial wallets & Tim Cook.

You don’t have to read everything, just skim through what’s interesting for you and reply back with your feedback.

Living In Beta is a digest of interesting things I find each week (2-3 articles & twitter threads each), and any new posts from me. If this is your first issue, welcome!

🗞 Articles of the week:

🏦 JPMorgan Chase buys land in Decentraland

The way the metaverse penetrates the mainstream isn’t just about entertainment / gaming co’s incorporating NFTs or Snoop Dogg buying up land to host his next virtual concert.

It’s also about legacy $cash (also called ‘institutional money’) experimenting by, say, opening the first bank in virtual land.

That’s exactly what JPMorgan have done - they’ve setup shop in Decentraland (with their virtual office featuring a spiral staircase, a live tiger and of course, a portrait of their CEO).

Suffice to say, they’re bullish on the metaverse. They’re expecting the metaverse will become a $1 trillion market opportunity.

A ton of known brands have recently entered the space - we spoke about Warner Music a couple of weeks ago building a concert-focused theme park on Sandbox and Gucci have purchased land on the same platform to develop a space to host ‘immersive experiences’.

Back to the JPMorgan opportunity - what’s interesting is they’re also undertaking eforts to build out their blockchain and crypto expertise to offer their clients.

My take: As more companies enter the space on the grounds of: experimentation —> more use cases will be developed —> leading to more opportunities (for new and established co’s) to develop innovative ideas.

I’m not a gaming expert but I can see the above flywheel playing out, leading to more companies providing infrastructure to onboard web2 companies into unchartered territory.

🚗 AI driving school to the rescue: Waabi

Driverless cars requires a TON of infrastructure to be able to succeed - we’re talking about trained AI models across 1000’s of data points, complex vision systems using multiple infrared cameras to work across different types of terrain, and a lot more.

One company I’m finding interesting that’s taking a different approach is Waabi.

Their premise is to forget about the cars and build a realistic virtual environment (lovingly called, ‘Waabi World’).

Instead of training an AI driver in real vehicles, Waabi plans to do it almost entirely inside the simulation. The plan is that the AI won’t be tested in real vehicles on real roads until a final round of fine-tuning. 

The pros:

• Mitigates AI driver weaknesses by teaching multiple AI drivers different abilities and THEN combining into a single skill set (happens faster & with less human input)

• Easy for engineers to swap out different scenarios (or replica cities) as they please (this allows 180x more scenarios played out, at much lower costs)

• AI can gain exposure to multiple scenarios AND the same types of scenarios to fine-tune faster

The cons:

• Can it be an actual replacement? What about in rare events/cases (e.g. child running into the road, the colour of the sky blocking a sudden stop from the vehicle ahead etc) ?

• Would you feel comfortable getting into a vehicle you know has been rigorously tested in a game-like environment, but not so much in the real-world?

My take: I’m probably too dismissive of something that hasn’t cut its chops in the real world, so I’d want to dig into the actual data & level of accuracy, but I’m sceptical. A hybrid approach, which is what companies like Wayve are doing, seem like a reasonable way forward, especially for optics & from a marketing POV.

🐦 Tweets of the week:

🍎 Tim Cook’s origin story:

• The story about Tim Cook I didn’t know I needed - while Tim Cook was ‘never the star athlete, star scholar or tech nerd’, he was ‘a star’ in his own right.

• He had the same passion for Apple as Job did, and had to deliver & operationalize production processes - an incredibly difficult challenge given the scale of Apple’s reach & operations

• The CEO’s role is to be the:All in order to guarantee the company operates smoothly and in the right direction.

  • Best at spotting outstanding people

  • Making excellent decisions based on intuition

  • Bringing out the best in their employees

💵 The case for non-custodial wallets:

TLDR:

• Canada asked every single financial system provider (e.g. banks, credit card companies, crypto & insurance co’s) to freeze the accounts of anyone supporting the trucker protests going on right now

• By doing this, the govt took away any ability for them to exercise their rights as citizens.

• This is because —> exercising your rights costs money.

• Freedom of speech may require: a website, an advert, travelling to different locations; freedom of religion may require: renting a space, paying salaries, buying food etc.

• Therefore, without access to the financial system, you become powerless.

Financial systems underpin everything. Weaponizing said system to resolve dissent shouldn’t be the answer.

🖤 Harlem Capital’s inspiring story:

A few interesting points:

• Jarrid’s aunt was told about a program when he was in 7th grade that gave low-income students support to get into top high schools - without it, he wouldn’t have got the access he needed to overcome his financial situation

• He met his Harlem Capital co-founders while at mlt.org

• They started small - raising $50k, then $1m and their track record spoke for itself. They’ve now raised $40m+ to invest in 1k diverse founders over 20 years.

My TLDR doesn’t do it justice - read the whole thread!

Until next time

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Until next time,

Fahim