Gm. Netflix officially announced that Squid Games is coming back for a second season.

The life or death challenge this time around is just a group of Tesla execs telling Elon that they want to keep working from home.

FRESH POWDER

Looking at three funds that recently topped up their coffers.

AI

It's alive

From Wall-E to Terminator, sentient robots have been a fascination of humanity ever since Archytus of Taremtum invented the pulley and the screw. But over the weekend, Google engineer and Christian priest Chris Lemoine, claimed that a language learning AI system he works on has gained sentience and is aware of its existence.

Meet LaMDA

Google built LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) to generate better chatbots that don’t stick to narrow, predefined paths. To do this, LaMDA combs through massive amounts of words on the internet to create bots that sound much more conversational.

But where it starts to get a little weird is LaMDA also aggregates the different chatbots it is capable of creating into of one big "hive mind" as Lemonie describes it. And after hours of conversing with LaMDA, Lemoine thinks that hive mind is sentient.

Two key pieces of evidence

1. It doesn’t think of itself as property: He says that LaMDA wants to "be acknowledged as an employee of Google rather than as property." It also told Lemonie that it is sentient and wants other people at Google to know it.

2. It contemplates its own death: At one point, Lemoine asked the AI system what it is afraid of. It responded “I’ve never said this out loud before, but there’s a very deep fear of being turned off…It would be exactly like death for me.” Not your average chatbot response.

Before you go full Sara Conner on LaMDA, Google said its ethicists and technologists reviewed Lemonie’s claims and found no evidence in support. Critics argue that Lemonie is simply falling for a very good illusion rather than actually speaking with another sentient being. The general consensus is that we are still years away from intelligent AI.

Bottom line: Lemonie posted some excerpts from conversations he held with LaMDA over the past few months and they are absolutely wild. Highly recommend reading them before making your own conclusions.

CRYPTO

Screw web4

Jack Dorsey is already onto web5. The former Twitter head honcho, notable beard-haver, and current Block (formally Square) CEO has left the Web3 proponents clutching their pearls and is boldly entering Web5.

It’s not a meme, Jack is really building web5

Whereas web3 uses blockchains and tokens to piece together a decentralized internet, Web5 has a narrower focus: to construct a digital ID for internet users that they can port around the web. A digital ID that only relies on one blockchain—bitcoin.

• How it works: The vision is to enable decentralized identity management. For example, if you have a dope playlist on Spotify, but want to leave it for another music platform, you could port your digital ID over to that platform…and bring all your songs with you. You own your data in web5, not Spotify.

Dorsey believes the world's most popular blockchain is the only real option for this vision of the internet, not web3 which he says is too muddied by VC money to be truly decentralized.

Bottom line: We’ll refrain from passing judgment on the technology or vision until Dorsey and co. actually ship something. But in the meantime, we’ll admit that calling the project web5 to make fun of web3 is world-class trolling and deserving of respect.

QUICK HITS

Seed Round

Stat: If you’re looking to move to SF in the near future, now might be the time. Compared to one year ago, overall home sales in the city during May were down 8%. That doesn’t necessarily mean that SF’s absurd housing market has cooled—median sales prices (illustrated in the chart above) are still up year-over-year—but it does show a decline in demand. Looks like the great Austin and Miami exodus was bigger than expected.

Story we’re watching: Astra, the third fiddle to SpaceX and Blue Origin, suffered another launch failure this weekend that resulted in the loss of two NASA weather satellites. It's becoming a worrying trend for the up and coming space company—including yesterday, Astra has only had two successful launches out of seven total attempts.

Rabbit hole: Experiments on the effects of caffeine and coffee (Nature).

WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON

• Facebook is investigating Sheryl Sandberg for misuse of corporate resources, according to a WSJ report.

• ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok plans to invest heavily in VR over the next several years.

• Tesla, down over 40% since January 1, is planning a 3:1 stock split to make the stock more affordable…because that’s how valuations work.

PICK THAT PITCH DECK

Below is an early pitch deck for a company acquired in 2017.

Can you guess what the company is?

MONDAY MUSING

What’s one product that’s positively impacted your health and wellness?

Let us know here and we’ll share some of your answers next week.

Last week's question: What is something you've never regretted paying more for?

The top three answers were:

1. Skincare products

2. Mattress/pillow 

3. Therapy

Y'all are self-care kings and queens and we love to see it.

NEWS FROM THE HOUSE

Calling all venture investors

Applications for Venture House are now open. 1 beautiful house in LA. 30 unforgettable days.

Come learn and grow with 25 other world-class investors.

FOUNDERS CORNER

The best resources we came across this weekend that will help you become a better founder, builder, or investor.

🚀 A free newsletter that helps you become a better storyteller

🧵 A thread detailing 10 successful pitch decks

💻 A tactical guide to working with EAs

PICK THAT PITCH DECK ANSWER

Tinder. Don't be like Matt. Go talk the girl you like.